The Trump Presidency : Part 2

WPMUFC said:
Never forget why they wanted him

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The retarded pussy is truly liberated now..
 
Raoul said:
100%. There is also the access question. Trump can afford to ignore journos because he has his own set of preferred right wing ones he can give interviews to; but mainstream journos don't have the luxury of boycotting Trump since he is the source of most of the news that butters their bread.
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Does the mainstream media need access? Trump does everything out in the open, they can just read the tweets and watch his press events and they will have all what they need.
 
NotChatGPT said:
Yup. His talk of trade surplus and break even is madness as well. We're happy to spend obscene amounts of money on a lot of American products, especially technology. But we're not going to start replacing vegetables, groceries in general, meat etc with imported goods from the US as the overall quality just isn't good enough and the high quality stuff is completely overpriced and unrealistic to purchase in the first place.
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He seems to extend his idea of trade surplus not just to every single country in the world (which is virtually impossible) but also every single industry (which is even less possible). It's either his complete of lack of understanding of economy, or he just knows how incredibly dumb his voters are and is trying to sell them the most outrageous thing.
 
neverdie said:
The other part about these tariffs.

Whilst it's true that many of these companies have assemblies and bases in Europe and Asia and elsewhere, they are all, as far as I can tell, almost listed on Wall Street. The owners of these companies, generally, are Vanguard and Blackrock (they have a controlling share in more than 90% of the stock market, not that they own all of it). The point is, if companies listed in the US, or US multinationals, call them what you want, are making record profits, which has been the case, that is declared, yes, in taxation in the nations they operate but primarily every quarter vis-a-vis their stock responsibilities. You cannot have both a raging US market (in no small part aided by these companies being listed there) and then inflict tariffs on these same companies (which is in effect what has happened) and expect that market to remain high. He set fire to it with these tariffs and now he's wondering about how you control your own gasoline tank.

Could well be inaccuracies, not an economist just interested in economic issues. Also, the threat would have worked fine. He could have done incrementalism. 5% worldwide tariff and then nation-specific increases (rather than the decreases from the hard move) based on what does or does not happen re companies coming back to the US. As said elsewhere, multinationals do not set up shop in nations because they are generous but because they want political-economic favors and advantages from these nations. Corporation tax, literate work-force, logistics, and so many other factors.
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None of that matters. The tariffs can never work, because trump wants to eliminate all trade deficits with everyone.

Take singapore, there are 6 million people there, 80% of them live in state provided housing because with such low wages in general, its the only way to keep a workforce on the island. In what world does anyone think they are ever going to buy as much from the 330 million people and richest economy the world has ever seen, as they sell?

The tariff situation cannot get better, it can only spiral more out of control because the man doing it has no clue at all about economics or trade. Zero.

And that is why every market in the world, not just the dow et all, not just the global indeces like FTSE, but even crypto, are taking a massive fall right now. His remarks over the weekend tell us that there is only one way this ends, by wiping trillions from global trade until someone actually stops him, and with the current two houses, that is not happening any time soon.
 
Acrobat7 said:
That to me is the most shocking fact. There are no checks and balances. The GOP doesn't care or is too scared and the Dems have no leadership or plan. It is truly shocking.
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I don't think it will continue like this. If he doesn't back down, I believe he could even be impeached over this.
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
There's a non-zero chance something happens:
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There are now 7 posturing. I’d put that at 1 maybe 2 at most who would actually carry this through. Once Trump gets his claws into them with threats and promises and the right wing media machine go after them it’s game over.
 
The fact that he sold 70+ million Americans on the idea that they need more low-paying, mundane factory jobs to combat a 4% unemployment crisis is remarkable.
 
Nogbadthebad said:
The tariffs can never work, because trump wants to eliminate all trade deficits with everyone.
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When the economy has been run on a purposed deficit due to a few factors that I know of, one being dollar hegemony. He's not wrong to assume that hegemony is over in the median term (basically planning for that, and not just him). He is wrong to set fire to the market. Had to know, given covid, and general common sense, that this would have such an impact. Logistic problems during covid send the market into shock. Now assume you created that problem intentionally and doubled down on it (the logistics of making a good here and selling it there and depending on where you are listed, or exporting/importing, with many stops, being taxed to death along the way). If anything, you'd expect a far greater fall in markets.
 
neverdie said:
When the economy has been run on a purposed deficit due to a few factors that I know of, one being dollar hegemony. He's not wrong to assume that hegemony is over in the median term (basically planning for that, and not just him). He is wrong to set fire to the market. Had to know, given covid, and general common sense, that this would have such an impact. Logistic problems during covid send the market into shock. Now assume you created that problem intentionally and doubled down on it (the logistics of making a good here and selling it there and depending on where you are listed, or exporting/importing, with many stops, being taxed to death along the way). If anything, you'd expect a far greater fall in markets.
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Wanting no deficits is essentially wanting a return to the barter economy.

There are no rational ways to look at this, to explain if he had just done things a little differently. It is a complete and utter failure to understand how trade works. It cannot be fixed, it can only be stopped, and there is no one to stop it.
 
Nogbadthebad said:
Wanting no deficits is essentially wanting a return to the barter economy.

There are no rational ways to look at this, to explain if he had just done things a little differently. It is a complete and utter failure to understand how trade works. It cannot be fixed, it can only be stopped, and there is no one to stop it.
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Assume nations reciprocate.

Looks to me like it would just resort in price gouging and another massive cost of living crisis (over an already extant one). And this even if they do not retaliate. Hard not to see this as a class thing. It will be the working class that gets shafted once more (always the case when the market crashes but this one is as manufactured as they come).
 
MikeUpNorth said:
It's designed to give investors—and trading algorithms—time to think and break out of a doom-loop.
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It's a hail mary pass. I remember it being used often and as soon as it expired it was back to dumping stock.

When has it ever really worked? Not that it won't be applied.
 
utdalltheway said:
Per the BBC the white house is saying more than 50 countries have reached out to make a deal. Which ones? And have those countries corroborated that?
The trump administration is good at controlling the media and playing to their base. The poor trumpers are lapping this shit up even as eggs and gasoline prices are still very high and it looks like a recession is being forced on them.
The levels of stupidity know no bounds.
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I don't think it would be surprising at all. Israel, Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia, other ASEAN nations like Malaysia and Indonesia seemingly have. I imagine the UK and EU have (at both a collective level and perhaps individual member states too to try to eke out benefits for their individual countries.

It's sadly not exactly unbelievable that countries will try to negotiate with the economic hyper power that's just blowing things up for all of us.
 
neverdie said:
It's a hail mary pass. I remember it being used often and as soon as it expired it was back to dumping stock.

When has it ever really worked? Not that it won't be applied.
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They worked well in Japan last August when the unwind of the so-called "carry trade" was causing a forced deleveraging and disorderly sell-off in the Topix index.

Circuit breakers aren't designed to stop markets from falling—they're just there to make sure markets don't enter a sudden downward spiral, which can happen in extreme scenarios if trading algorithms get locked in a feedback loop where selling automatically triggers more selling. The other scenario is when a shock causes large margin calls—traders may need a pause to post more margin rather than trigger a cascade of forced liquidations.
 
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Acrobat7 said:
Well, he's already been impeached twice. What does one more really change?
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If it's not a symbolic act and throws him out of office, it changes a lot. Maybe Trump isn't wrong after all and we really only need to suffer a little longer for things to bet better, just in a different way than he meant it :)

Right now, he's borrowed Musk's chainsaw to saw off the branch he's sitting on and shows no signs of stopping
 
It's amazing how good people like Trump are at building a cult and controlling the narrative yet how bad they are at everything else.
 
Balljy said:
It's amazing how good people like Trump are at building a cult and controlling the narrative yet how bad they are at everything else.
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He's had abundant help from the Fox media empire. If they turned on him he'd be terrible at controlling the narrative too.
 
RoyH1 said:
He's had abundant help from the Fox media empire. If they turned on him he'd be terrible at controlling the narrative too.
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That assumes that what is happening isn't part of the plan, which part of me thinks it is. He's a greedy selfish prick surrounded by greedy selfish pricks.
 
NotChatGPT said:
That list of his doesn't make much sense, the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was negotiated and signed during Trumps presidency in early 2020. His take on the treatment of allies, partners and not to mention protesting must be fun to read now.
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Very few of them make any sense.

Presumably, Ackman will be up in arms about the latest killing of a US citizen abroad too.
 
Reading loads of commentaries today how those tariffs, as idiotic as they are, are by no means a random thing they did, but part of a plan outlined by Trumps economic advisor Miran with the aim to devalue the dollar and strongarm countries into restructuring their investment in US government bonds or some shit like that, aiming to implement something ominously named the "Mar a Lago Accord".

I have no idea about the implications about any of this, apart from knowing that these guys are fecking maniacs as well as complete morons, but it is very wrong and dangerous to think Trump doesn't act according to a very focused plan or isn't aware what he's doing.

https://www.faz.net/pro/weltwirtsch...-lago-plan-den-dollar-riskiert-110385023.html
https://archive.ph/K0IOt
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/do...o_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf
 
Nogbadthebad said:
Wanting no deficits is essentially wanting a return to the barter economy.

There are no rational ways to look at this, to explain if he had just done things a little differently. It is a complete and utter failure to understand how trade works. It cannot be fixed, it can only be stopped, and there is no one to stop it.
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It's a return to mercantilism, people will still use currency, but it's definitely a radical approach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

I don't think they realize how much extra value is created by globalization.

Apparently the famous Adam Smith argued against mercantilism, denying their view that wealth is zero-sum, instead putting forth free markets, specialization and comparative advantage as factors that mean more prosperity than under merchantilist protectionism.

It won't help that no one knows if this will hold, or if the tariffs will be negotiated away for concessions. I'm leaning towards the latter because it seems much less stupid, but that hardly makes it more likely with this administration.

But I find it encouraging there's actually historical precedence for this, is not completely out of left field. There's hope someone in the administration has read a history book.
 
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Beans said:
But I find it encouraging there's actually historical precedence for this, is not completely out of left field. There's hope someone in the administration has read a history book.
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The historical precedence for blanket tariffs is purely negative. If they are going with it anyway in this form, it means that they either didn't read it or don't give a shit.
 
Money really does make the world go round, doesn’t it? It’s all we care about at the end of the day
 
Beans said:
It's a return to merchantilism, people will still use currency, but it's definitely a radical approach.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

I don't think they realize how much extra value is created by globalization.

Apparently the famous Adam Smith argued against merchantilism, denying their view that wealth is zero-sum, instead putting forth free markets, specialization and comparative advantage as factors that mean more prosperity than under merchantilist protectionism.

It won't help that no one knows if this will hold, or if the tariffs will be negotiated away for concessions. I'm leaning towards the latter because it seems much less stupid, but that hardly makes it more likely with this administration.

But I find it encouraging there's actually historical precedence for this, is not completely out of left field. There's hope someone in the administration has read a history book.
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What's the end goal with concessions though? The countries with the largest deficits will innately be the ones who the world has been using for cheap labour and the gain from lower tariff's on US goods going to those countries won't do much.
 
Balljy said:
What's the end goal with concessions though? The countries with the largest deficits will innately be the ones who the world has been using for cheap labour and the gain from lower tariff's on US goods going to those countries won't do much.
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Don’t worry, we have a plan if the lords of the rest of the world won’t bend the knee. We will lower the legal working age and make children do the cheap labour.
 
I find the talk of de-dollarization very misinformed.

There is no alternative and until there is, even in the "Medium-Long" Term nothing can really replace the dollar.

The Euro isn't going to be it, what alternatives are there?

The funny thing is the only real alternative is RMB which is actually artificially pegged against the dollar which the CCP cannot afford to drop or there will be a massive economic crash.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
There is no alternative and until there is, even in the "Medium-Long" Term nothing can really replace the dollar.
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It's not short-sighted at all. It's long-sighted and inevitable.

It's not about what will replace it (you can come up with all kinds of mechanisms) but the point at which it becomes absurd (as absurd as holding onto the Pound post-war). No more than 30 years. Guaranteed.
 
AfonsoAlves said:
I find the talk of de-dollarization very misinformed.

There is no alternative and until there is, even in the "Medium-Long" Term nothing can really replace the dollar.

The Euro isn't going to be it, what alternatives are there?

The funny thing is the only real alternative is RMB which is actually artificially pegged against the dollar which the CCP cannot afford to drop or there will be a massive economic crash.
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Could you elaborate on that? I'm only getting started with the whole currency stuff. Why isn't the Euro an alternative and why the RMB?
 
AfonsoAlves said:
I find the talk of de-dollarization very misinformed.

There is no alternative and until there is, even in the "Medium-Long" Term nothing can really replace the dollar.

The Euro isn't going to be it, what alternatives are there?

The funny thing is the only real alternative is RMB which is actually artificially pegged against the dollar which the CCP cannot afford to drop or there will be a massive economic crash.
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It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the blond ballsack thought he could replace the Dollar with $Trump, his cryptocurrency. Probably sold on that dream by his 'advisors'.
 
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