Trump​ ❤️ Tariffs

[The Frankish Reich]

And it's the return of Jimmy Carter! A little self-sacrifice in this latest Time of Malaise.

 

 

[Doc Brown]

10 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

And it's the return of Jimmy Carter! A little self-sacrifice in this latest Time of Malaise.

 

 

I've said this before but if Trump doesn't back down and do his usual artificial trade agreements with other countries this policy we'll have a lot of short term pain in order to have long term pain.

[Joe Ferguson forever]

MAGAs will be reminded every morning.  Sadly, so will smart  people.

 

The number of cups of coffee Americans drink daily varies slightly depending on the source. According to some reports, Americans collectively consume about 400 million cups of coffee each day. However, a more recent report from the National Coffee Association indicates that this number has increased to approximately 517 million cups per day. This reflects a significant increase in coffee consumption over recent years. 

Guess what?

You can’t grow coffee in any of the United States of America except Hawaii. And you can’t begin to grow enough coffee in Hawaii to meet even a small part of America’s daily demand. So you have import it from all around the world (Africa, South America, Central America, Asia). 

Right now, a cup of coffee or a can of coffee at the supermarket or a 5-pound bag from News Items’ favored roasting company, costs X. This week it will cost X plus 10%. At least. If the coffee comes from certain countries, it will cost X plus a lot more. 

Politically speaking, what the White House has managed to create here is a dailyreminder to every single coffee drinker in the United States of America that their cost of living has increased. Every day they will get this little memo: 

Your coffee used to cost $1.75. Now it costs $2.00. We’re sorry. Tough luck. Sincerely yours — the Trump administration.

In the annals of political stupidity go, there are “own goals” and there are “own goals”. This one is epic. 

 

Edited Sunday at 06:17 PM by Joe Ferguson forever

[Mikie2times]

1 hour ago, Doc Brown said:

I've said this before but if Trump doesn't back down and do his usual artificial trade agreements with other countries this policy we'll have a lot of short term pain in order to have long term pain.

That’s just it. No end game, no definition of success. End game as far as I can tell is bring back more manufacturing jobs. Ok, at what cost? If every consumer in the US is paying more for basic goods and services, did it end up being worth the additional manufacturing jobs? A study was done on his first term round of terrors and it found washing machines and drying machines elevated in cost and they never went back down. That while jobs were created the average cost to Americans equaled 800k per created job. That isn’t winning. 

Edited Sunday at 06:53 PM by Mikie2times

[The Frankish Reich]

7 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

That’s just it. No end game, no definition of success. End game as far as I can tell is bring back more manufacturing jobs. Ok, at what cost? If every consumer in the US is paying more for basic goods and services, did it end up being worth the additional manufacturing jobs. A study was done on his first term round of terrors and it found washing machines and drying machines elevated in cost and they never went back down. That while jobs were created the average cost to Americans equaled 800k per created job. That isn’t winning. 

I like the spell check - "terrors" (tariffs)

 

[Doc Brown]

8 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

That’s just it. No end game, no definition of success. End game as far as I can tell is bring back more manufacturing jobs. Ok, at what cost? If every consumer in the US is paying more for basic goods and services, did it end up being worth the additional manufacturing jobs. A study was done on his first term round of terrors and it found washing machines and drying machines elevated in cost and they never went back down. That while jobs were created the average cost to Americans equaled 800k per created job. That isn’t winning. 

I don't even know the end game as there's a lot of mixed messaging.  Is it a short term policy to make better trade deals with individual countries?  Is it to create jobs and businesses in the manufacturing realm to come back to the United States?  Are they trying to reorder global trade?  In the end, this is pry what's going to happen though as Trump makes artificial trade agreements to satisfy his ego while not sending the country into a depression under his watch.

 

 

[Joe Ferguson forever]

21 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

I don't even know the end game as there's a lot of mixed messaging.  Is it a short term policy to make better trade deals with individual countries?  Is it to create jobs and businesses in the manufacturing realm to come back to the United States?  Are they trying to reorder global trade?  In the end, this is pry what's going to happen though as Trump makes artificial trade agreements to satisfy his ego while not sending the country into a depression under his watch.

 

 

I saw many unexpected protesters yesterday, even "modern" republicans.  Most were older and carried signs like "Hands off Social Security", "Hands off Medicare", "Hands off my 401K...  Once inflation hits, I think we'll see more complaints from everyday maga's.  Their perspective will change.  Perhaps that will change trump's plan but  I'm not hopeful.

[Doc Brown]

3 minutes ago, Joe Ferguson forever said:

I saw many unexpected protesters yesterday, even "modern" republicans.  Most were older and carried signs like "Hands off Social Security", "Hands off Medicare", "Hands off my 401K...  Once inflation hits, I think we'll see more complaints from everyday maga's.  Their perspective will change.  Perhaps that will change trump's plan but  I'm not hopeful.

I didn't mean to minimize ardent Trump supporters with that graphic because I think most are good people who feel there's no alternative to not support everything he does 100%.  I just think Trump is a great salesman and artificial trade agreements with other countries is his end game. He doesn't want to go down as a president that sparked a deep recession.  There was a reason they waited until after 4:00 on Wednesday for him to announce those tariffs.  They didn't want to spook the market too much.  It didn't work.

[Joe Ferguson forever]

49 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

I didn't mean to minimize ardent Trump supporters with that graphic because I think most are good people who feel there's no alternative to not support everything he does 100%.  I just think Trump is a great salesman and artificial trade agreements with other countries is his end game. He doesn't want to go down as a president that sparked a deep recession.  There was a reason they waited until after 4:00 on Wednesday for him to announce those tariffs.  They didn't want to spook the market too much.  It didn't work.

We’ll see. All of his spokesmen today said the tariffs are permanent or at least wouldn’t say they were not permanent. They need to be honest with the American people and our allies. This is the kind of bad faith business that reaped him multiple bankruptcies. I hope he does walk it back and everything works out fine. But I don’t think he smart enough to pull it off. 

[Doc Brown]

3 minutes ago, Joe Ferguson forever said:

We’ll see. All of his spokesmen today said the tariffs are permanent or at least wouldn’t say they were not permanent. They need to be honest with the American people and our allies. This is the kind of bad faith business that reaped him multiple bankruptcies. I hope he does walk it back and everything works out fine. But I don’t think he smart enough to pull it off. 

There's some genuinely smart economic minds on the right that are twisting themselves into pretzels to defend something they know is idiotic simply because their team is behind the idea.  I'm sure they can sell to the public that Trump's tariffs were beyond successful and exceeded even their own wildest expectations.  

[Joe Ferguson forever]

3 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

There's some genuinely smart economic minds on the right that are twisting themselves into pretzels to defend something they know is idiotic simply because their team is behind the idea.  I'm sure they can sell to the public that Trump's tariffs were beyond successful and exceeded even their own wildest expectations.  

Firstly, that’s blatantly unpatriotic of them. Secondly, they can sell to MAGA s for now. Those millions of protesters yesterday represent 50 times more like minded Americans. 

[aristocrat]

8 minutes ago, Joe Ferguson forever said:

Firstly, that’s blatantly unpatriotic of them. Secondly, they can sell to MAGA s for now. Those millions of protesters yesterday represent 50 times more like minded Americans. 

The paid protestors lol.  Soros got out the checkbook again

[The Frankish Reich]

15 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

There's some genuinely smart economic minds on the right that are twisting themselves into pretzels to defend something they know is idiotic simply because their team is behind the idea.  I'm sure they can sell to the public that Trump's tariffs were beyond successful and exceeded even their own wildest expectations.  

Right.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/stop-looking-for-methods-in-the-madness

[Mikie2times]

1 hour ago, Doc Brown said:

I didn't mean to minimize ardent Trump supporters with that graphic because I think most are good people who feel there's no alternative to not support everything he does 100%.  I just think Trump is a great salesman and artificial trade agreements with other countries is his end game. He doesn't want to go down as a president that sparked a deep recession.  There was a reason they waited until after 4:00 on Wednesday for him to announce those tariffs.  They didn't want to spook the market too much.  It didn't work.

A lot of the Trump voters that actually sealed the deal aren’t even MAGA. They have bulky 401k’s. They were ostracized by the Democrats in the election process (as was I). They took a lesser of two evils approach on the vote. But no where did they expect what has been happening to the level that it has and they certainly won’t put up with. Trump can’t hold the support of the US with his MAGA core. He needs to the moderates and swing voters and he’s losing them in mass with these policies. It will be a democratic route next cycle. 

Edited Sunday at 08:43 PM by Mikie2times

[The Frankish Reich]

14 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

A lot of the Trump voters that actually sealed the deal aren’t even MAGA. They have bulky 401k’s.

True.

Trump wouldn't have won with only true MAGAs. He needed to pull in a sizable number of prior Biden/Obama voters.

I'm enjoying the "Rich Guy Slips Up and Tells Us What He Really Thinks" moments.

First, Commerce Secretary Lutnick: if you complain about a missed social security check, you're probably a fraudster. Anyone else can just wait.

Now, Treasury Sec Bessent says people approaching retirement don't really care about or watch the markets

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/bessent-americans-retire-arent-worried-stock-market-recession-rcna199892

 

Yeah, right. Let's say you've been successful and financially prudent. You have a 401k worth a million bucks. Or it was worth a million buck a week ago. Now it's worth less than $900,000. Remember, you're a conservative investor. You're a 60 year old male. You had planned to buy a life annuity to eliminate risk of loss. 

 

Last week that annuity would've paid you about $5700 a month. Add social security and any other pension and you're sitting pretty. Now that annuity would pay only about $5100 a month. Big deal, says Bessent. That's only $600 a month. Only $7200 a year. Who cares? Chump change. Hell, hubby John and I paid the surrogate 5X more than that.

 

That's our oligarchy. Government by the billionaire class. Miss a check, be late on rent? So what. Work another two year to replenish that 401k? No biggie.

Edited Sunday at 08:58 PM by The Frankish Reich

[Andy1]

The entire way Trump has implemented these tariffs will cause extreme financial stress for businesses. The concern I have heard from business owners is if the tariffs are here for months, it will force smaller businesses to close, other successful businesses will be forced to sell out to the big boy billionaires in their respective markets, resulting in the big fish getting bigger and ultimately less choice for consumers. Once prices go up, they probably won’t come down. This is winning for Trump and his billionaire buddies. 

[The Frankish Reich]

1 minute ago, Andy1 said:

The entire way Trump has implemented these tariffs will cause extreme financial stress for businesses. The concern I have heard from business owners is if the tariffs are here for months, it will force smaller businesses to close, other successful businesses will be forced to sell out to the big boy billionaires in their respective markets, resulting in the big fish getting bigger and ultimately less choice for consumers. Once prices go up, they probably won’t come down. This is winning for Trump and his billionaire buddies. 

If those small businesses believed that the "reciprocal tariffs" are here to stay, they'd really have no choice but to go out of business right now. The imported wine shop is well and truly effed. There's no way they can survive with 20% tariffs on every case they buy. But almost nobody believes Trump is that crazy, that power mad. Or that the Congress is that subservient. So they will try to stay in business, eating much of the cost of the tariffs, maybe laying off some staff, until sanity returns. They'll dip into their own savings to keep the business afloat. They are totally at the mercy of one guy: Donald J. Trump. And boy does he love that feeling.

[Mikie2times]

10 minutes ago, Andy1 said:

The entire way Trump has implemented these tariffs will cause extreme financial stress for businesses. The concern I have heard from business owners is if the tariffs are here for months, it will force smaller businesses to close, other successful businesses will be forced to sell out to the big boy billionaires in their respective markets, resulting in the big fish getting bigger and ultimately less choice for consumers. Once prices go up, they probably won’t come down. This is winning for Trump and his billionaire buddies. 

And why would any prudent business owner take the steps to help accommodate a more long term outlook on these policies? One that Trump sort of needs to even check the box of returning jobs? No trust. How can you reroute your supply chains in a permanent way, build more in the US, when the reality is this could very well be an ill conceived negotiation ploy. At some point business and foreign countries have to trust our government will keep the rules the same for more than five seconds to have any material impact, good or bad. 

Edited Sunday at 09:08 PM by Mikie2times

[The Frankish Reich]

5 minutes ago, Mikie2times said:

At some point business and foreign countries have to trust our government will keep the rules the same for more than five seconds to have any material impact,

Unstable idiot.

[Joe Ferguson forever]

1 hour ago, aristocrat said:

The paid protestors lol.  Soros got out the checkbook again

Hmmm, nobody paid me or anyone I knew there. Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better