“nufufu, all according to keikaku!” - Doald Tump
What I find most fascinating/hilarous about this is “leftists” up in arms about this. This is like the most far left thing you can do other than actually seizing the means of production.
I am not exactly a leftist but I find the tariffs wonderful. Consumerism is a pox on the nation, this should fix this.
Why are we opposed to exploitation and pollution here at home but are ok when China does it because it allows us to buy a year’s worth of clothes every week for the price of single ethically produced garment??
Over leveraged billionaires are in trouble, BIGLY. If this continues they will be margin called and forced to start selling their shit. Of course the flip side is that liquid billionaires will come out of this richer than before. Probably the real plan behind this.
Also can we talk about how much of the economy was just fantasy? Billions, even maybe trillions of dollars of our economy is simply speculative value backed by mass delusion.
Turns out Trump may be a tankie after all.
The one problem is that it will not yield results within 4 years, so it will cause a whole lot of pain only for whoever is in power next to reverse it as soon as they take office. Hell this might not last till the end of the week for all we know.
Consumerism is a pox on the nation, this should fix this.
Leftism is when you fix consumerism by rendering common people too poor to buy shit. What a take.
Why are we opposed to exploitation and pollution here at home but are ok when China does it because it allows us to buy a year’s worth of clothes every week for the price of single ethically produced garment??
Well, first off, these tariffs aren’t focused on China. They’re hitting everyone, including countries with better labor laws and more environmental regulation than the US, such as the EU. Second, the tariffs aren’t conditional on countries making improvements, like if you want to argue we should have tariffs based on emissions per capita, that’s not an unreasonable position (although we’d have to tariff ourselves somehow), but that’s not what’s actually happening at all.
Turns out Trump may be a tankie after all.
No, he isn’t.
Not too poor to buy things, only poor enough that you’ll consider it twice before buying another plastic piece of shit you don’t need off of Amazon. It’s absolutely messed up that the ONLY reason we can consume as we do is because we moved all the pollution and exploitation to where we can’t see it, so that we can consume with a clean conscience. I don’t know how you can defend this shit, because I can’t. If your country’s economy depends on the exploitation of the people of another’s that just colonialism disguised as free market trade.
China was an example because it’s the most well known one. Second I never said that the implementation was good itself, I just think the concept of universal tariffs is very much solid especially in terms of ethics (which Trump somewhat frames it that way, of course his intentions are both bad and not well thought out so it’s only superficial ) with the caveat that it results in short term destruction of wealth which depending on the point of view is not so bad. I at least don’t think the levels of speculation in our markets is good and anything that pops that bubble is a good thing.
I don’t know how you can defend this shit, because I can’t.
I’m not. Just because I don’t like Trump’s policies or approach doesn’t mean I’m supporting the status quo. They’re both bad.
I just think the concept of universal tariffs is very much solid especially in terms of ethics
Why should we place tariffs on countries with better labor laws where things are more ethically produced?
I think, for ‘lefties,’ the trouble is that Trump is replacing progressive income tax with regressive consumption tax. Not that US tax structure was particularly progressive, but it at least pretended. Now, the low end of the income scale, living paycheck-to-paycheck, spending everything on goods & services it going to have to spend an extra 15%, straight to federal coffers, ,while corps get a 25% tax cut and billionaires get elimination of the estate tax.
It’s schadenfreude to see billionaires lose 10 or 20% of their wealth, but they still own all the factories. They’re still going to make money, and they will make up for production reductions by reducing workforce and eliminating 100% of many worker incomes. That is why all the economists are crying recession: consumption taxes reduce consumption, reduced consumption reduces employment, unemployment reduces consumption.
Right, that was a point I made in there somewhere. That the reality is that this will make billionaires more money which tracks with Trump. But even if that were somehow addressed the last part would still happen, it is a feature not a bug. The economic depression is necessary to burst all bubbles, and we have a lot of them, which in turn will make domestic production cheap enough that it is actually feasible. It does require the absolute implosion of markets and the destruction of all speculative wealth that exists in the system. The middle class will be the one to take the hardest hit in fact, not only because they will lose the value of their spending money, and their good paying jobs, but their retirement funds will be in tatters. Buuut if you see it through, at the end of the depression we should have a better functioning economy than what we have now. The problem is Trump simply does not have the spine nor the time to see it through and people really hate sacrificing the short term for an uncertain long term that doesn’t necessarily benefit them directly.
Anyways I think I rambled but I think the tariffs are actually a good very long term play if you are willing to cause a lot of shock and pain in the short term. We just don’t have the stomach for it, so maybe the artificially inflated economy is better. At least until the balloon pops anyways and we have no other choice but to suffer through the same depression but it is easier to stomach because there’s literally no other choice.
I mean, if you’re starting from the view that we have too many poor people for the number of billionaires, then killing off a bunch of plebs in a massive economic depression is definitely one way to balance the field. Just seems a little psychopathic to me, is all.
It’s definitely a MAGA theme, though: let bird flu run wild and all the survivors will be immune; crash the economy and all the survivors will be better off; throw out all the immigrants and every that remains will be comfortably English-speaking; jail all the protesters and everyone that remains will agree.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think i get the sentiment of what you’re saying. Tariffs can be good to bolster local production, and thus, local workers under the assumsion that businesses doing well is good for workers (I’m not convinced it is, at least I don’t think it’ s what’s best for workers. But let’s work within the limitations of the capitalist system here.
The problem is how USA is doing it right now. If you give a 10 year warning before implementing tariffs, while also allocating money to support growing the needed industry, you make sure the industry has time to adapt and make the necessary changes to accomodate the needed growth in production and educating the workforce.
None of that is happening. In fact, while putting in the tariffs, the workers’s jobs are threatened with an economic collaps. The outcome in this scenario is survival of the rich, who will survive a 99% loss in wealth and income just fine. While the most vulnerable, the working class and those even more vulnerable like the sick or handicapped, are asked to simply live with it, and hope to god they may some day be able to afford what they used to. Meanwhile the richest will keep buying all that the working class are forced to sell off, just to survive.
Tariffs aren’t necessarily bad, but in this implementation they’re absolutely catastrophic to the working class, and a sale to the oligarchs.
I think it’s the one thing everyone can agree on.
But you have to be aware that it depends greatly on your point of view of how economies should work. Do the dynamics of economics exist simply to push up the GDP or do they exist to create abundance and prosperity that everyone can take part off? The current economic system as it works simply exists to push up the GDP increasingly through financial alchemy, speculative assets and debt. Neoliberals will hold that this is good, but I’m not convinced because my eyes and ears tell me different. This is not a sustainable economic system, even if it looks good on the surface. Or more specifically it is not a sustainable economic system for the middle class. It is schrodingers economy in a way, good and bad existing in superposition.
This is why China keeps gaining ground, they plan for the long term and have high tolerance for short term pain. Their corporations don’t sweat a bad year, look at Huawei for example. An American company I think would rather sell of its assets and give every exec a gajillion dollars before going though the trouble of rebuilding themselves from being banned from one of their largest markets. Our corps only plan on a quarter by quarter basis, our government on 4 year terms, and entire organizations change plans on a bad day at the stock market. It’s frankly ridiculous how short sighted we’ve become, and our economy really is emblematic of that short sightedness.
Part of a collectivist dream. Companies losing billions of dollars in a day, and self inflicted to boot.
Or what, you gonna cry over unrealized gains and imaginary money?
Beyond that, trump has talked about putting up tariffs since years ago. Hell I remember even Pelosi, Bernie and Biden did as well. So yeah this is just another negotiation chip.
Buckle up bois
Everyone talks about tariffs. That’s not the issue. The issue is a universal tariff based on chatgpt. He didn’t even calculate the correct tariffs rates on the US. The other issue is most of the 1% have the means to buy boatloads of stock right now as it’s crashing. Companies won’t lose money. They’ll pass this onto consumers and workers. Raise prices, no bonuses, cut staff. So the working class will be hit the hardest while the 1% profits. And these tariffs aren’t expected to actually bring any manufacturing back to the US.
So the 1% can buy nearly all of it for a song. Provided of course all of us the dumb money sells.
