Trump+Musk; the DOGE and Pony show continues -Trump thread #140

[Spandauer]

Trump, as out of control as a faulty Tesla, takes an ICE pick to the Constitution.

Thanks to @AcrossthePond55 and @Jaichangecentfoisdenom for the thread title and sub-title 😊

Photocollage: Cold War Steve
Map illustration: Barry Blitt

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5286872-the-orange-man-and-the-state-of-his-union-trump-thread-139

More on those random countries

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/03/business/trump-tariffs-uninhabited-islands-intl-hnk/index.html

"One enclave hit particularly hard by Trump’s tariffs is Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French territory of eight small islands near the Canadian province of Newfoundland. With a population of about 5,000 people, its “the sole remaining vestige of France’s once vast North American possessions,” the CIA Factbook says. Its exports – “processed crustaceans, shellfish,” according to the CIA – are now subject to a whopping US tariff of 50%, way more than France faces (20%) as part of the European Union"

"Another Australian territory targeted by tariffs is the Cocos Islands. With a population of 600 people, the territory sends 32% of its exports – ships – to the US, according to the CIA Factbook. They now face a 10% tariff."

Was this just a copy and paste job?

If I were exporting, I would be looking to expand my markets to a much wider area and ensure I didn't have a lot of eggs in one basket.

US consumers might just find that they start to see fewer items available to them on the shelves. And those that are there will be more expensive if they aren't American.

And I am guessing that given the high cost of production in the US, then American goods are going to be more expensive than foreign made goods.

How the tariffs were calculated

https://bsky.app/profile/davidfickling.bsky.social/post/3lluzuseuls2s

I just did the numbers and this assumption looks to be completely right.

Let’s pause for a minute and consider how INSANE this is. 🧵

Easier to read here

https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:yxiibcgnjyr66f4pbelejrxb/post/3lluzuseuls2s

This caught my eye.Maybe this should be call the ChatGPT tariff war ? Not gonna do OpenAI any favours I suspect.

I don't think we should be surprised by this. Nothing this administration does is professional. They lie continually and people appointed into key positions do not have the expertise to do them.

On another note, musk is denying he has said he will leave.

It's astonishing that they manage to be this vile, venal and fascistic considering how completely incompetent they are in almost every situation.

The Musk thing is going to be interesting. Every Republican up for reelection in a purple state in '26 is going to be trying to figure out how to scramble away from him and his legacy, but at the same time, he holds the means to ruin them (and Scrotus).

Many of you know I used to work in freight forwarding.

Stuff en route to the USA from Vietnam and China and Europe takes many days at sea and then sits outside LA or Baltimore Harbour for several days on customs clearance.

It will be cheaper for the shippers to sit the ships at sea uncleared for a couple of weeks
than pay the tariff.
Crews will get bored but the weather is improving in the Northern Hemisphere.
Sitting for six weeks may be enough for the policy to collapse.

The shortages in the USA will be immediate but short term.
The price rises will be immediate and long term.

As with Brexit, suppliers will find the customer of least resistance.

What is wrong with these people?
https://bsky.app/profile/deonandan.bsky.social/post/3llubohyxuc2e

On which note, if you are over 50 and haven't had your shingles vaccine, get it!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08800-x

Yes it's looking like all AI software is coming up with eerily similar methods of calculating tariff rates as the white house

https://bsky.app/profile/dansinker.com/post/3llunnyfeoj2v

A guy at work aid we should think of using AI as "like having 1000 interns working for you" but AI is in practice riddled with errors, and it's more like having 1000 interns who are actually all winging it

I decided to watch a cosy mystery and read the write up online, and I have just seen the picture of him holding the boards. Surprised he hasn't got Melania as his assistant. This is like being in a surreal dream that none of us can wake up from. WTF is going on? Every day brings some new insanity

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says the EU deserves tariffs for not buying America's 'beautiful beef'.
www.businessinsider.com/howard-lutnick-eu-deserves-tariffs-not-buying-america-beautiful-beef-2025-4

The beautiful beef from farms that are full of H5N1 because of their terrible standards. I’ll pass thanks.

Yes it's looking like all AI software is coming up with eerily similar methods of calculating tariff rates as the white house

Nothing "eerie" about it. LLM will never be more than sophisticated pattern matching on steroids at the speed of light. What you get is a very expensive variant of "the wisdom of crowds".

https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1907657860793696281

The follow up, where the deputy WH press secretary says this definitely isn’t what they did they were all calculated using a formula. Which shows it definitely is what they did.

This is truly amazing. The Deputy White House Press Secretary is claiming that I'm wrong, and that the "tariff rates" on Trump's chart were calculated by "literally" measuring every country's tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers. To prove it, he screenshots the formula the USTR says was used to calculate the reciprocal tariffs we imposed on other countries. And when you back out the Greek symbols, what is that formula? Trade deficit/imports - exactly what I said it was. I don't know if the Deputy Press Secretary was misinformed, or is just being misleading. Either way, the Trump administration did not "literally calculate tariff and non tariff barriers" to determine the tariff rates it's imposing on other countries. As I said, it divided our trade deficit with a country by our imports with that country, and then multiplied by 0.5 (because Trump was being "lenient"). Oh, and if our trade deficit/imports with a country is less than 10%, or we have a trade surplus with a country, Trump slapped a flat 10% tariff on that country.

Penguin Tax sums it up

I said this on another thread, but, honestly, I think 9/11 broke Howard Lutnick's brain. There's no other explanation.

Honestly not difficult to see how the orange buffoon managed to bankrupt a casino looking at this.

The thing is, even if American goods are pushed on the populations of the rest of the world, even if they are presented as cheaper, with the manner they’re being forced through we may see behaviour similar to the Canadians and prospective Tesla buyers. Some people will go out of their way to find out more about the American connections to what produce they’re going to buy, and make a deliberate alternative choice. For some things, you just can’t force people to buy them.

It’s 9am TFT time here, and citizens are already gathering to protest Tariffs by the United States. Our plain clothes Officer Penguins are attempting to maintain calm, but unfortunately we keep losing them in the crowd.

https://bsky.app/profile/heardislandgov.bsky.social/post/3lluzye3vsu2j

Love it! 🐧

Already happening here in Sweden. There's a massive boycott of American goods, even those produced in the EU. There's not a cat in hell's chance people would buy American beef.

https://bsky.app/profile/iankmsmith.ft.com/post/3llvnbzcdak2q

“Investors are sinking their teeth into the dollar, on the narrative that tariffs will asymmetrically damage the US economy"

Dollar drops as Donald Trump’s tariffs stoke economic fears
https://www.ft.com/content/331399ce-fae8-4c92-a8c5-8cc805341baf

That tariff board had a touch of the boxing about it, all he was missing was somebody in a bikini parading around holding it up, very much the same vibe though...