Are We Feeling Liberated Yet? - Trump thread #141

[Spandauer]

King Donald has bigly new tariffs, First Lady Elmo turns out to be ballot box poison and 'Pick Me Girl' Vance is a meanie to the EU.

(But at least the penguins on the Heard and McDonald Islands are wearing suits)

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5297058-trumpmusk-the-doge-and-pony-show-continues-trump-thread-140

Why would this stuff impact Europe?

What stuff?

I also wonder whether she deliberately spoke out of turn because she didn't want to be involved in the future occupation of an ally.

Sorry I rushed that. Trumps tariff stuff is still due to send Europe into a recession.

I don’t understand how the bonds market in the US and tariff wars between China and the US can impact European economies

US consumers buy European products. If US consumers are feeling less confidence, are facing higher borrowing rates etc, then that's going to affect the amount that US consumers buy from Europe.

And (not an economist, so this is just a guess) if trade between other countries and the US slows, i.e. China, it drives up prices in general since economy of scale in production is lower, so the stuff imported by the EU has a higher price tag, tariffs aside.

What a mess.

Off to meet friends for dinner. Hope we manage to talk about something else, although probably wishful thinking.

The on/off tariffs are creating volatility in stock markets all over the world. Businesses are unable to plan for both short and long term so affecting growth prospects. Are tariffs a short term thing, or are they permanent and tilting us into recession? Right now, we don't know if Trump's tariff's are a tactical move to frighten countries into trade negotiations, or a deliberate act to create a recession and devaluate USD.

The US/China escalating trade war will affect global economies and will lead to consumers importing and spending less. Europe trades with both US and China.

CNN Business has good coverage and newspapers such as The Guardian, in the UK.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/11/investing/stock-market-dow-tariffs/index.html

😂 sadly it’s true! (Pic being checked)

Are they actually collecting tariffs?

US Customs and Border Control (CBP) is the federal agency responsible for collecting tariffs when imported goods arrive at the US border.
But importers say that a glitch in the system has meant that they have not started paying tariffs yet, despite Donald Trump saying that the tariffs, particularly the 145% tariffs on China, are already in place.

According to CNBC, the glitch comes from CBP currently not being able to tell which ships are exempted from the tariffs, because they were “on the water” before the tariffs went into effect, and those that were shipped out after the tariffs.

“Social media posts are not law,” Jarred Varaelli, a vice president at Savino Del Bene, a logistics firm. “With the constant changes to the regulations, all customs brokers in our industry have a difficult task ahead of them.”

CBP told CNBC that they will issue an update once the issue is resolved, which means the agency is likely still working out exactly how to carry out the tariffs that are still in place.

FFS.

I spotted this yesterday. It's not buried, but very sotto voce Quite significant if you think about it.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpq77q38vj1o

I mean of course he has can’t have an attractive, successful charismatic black man on display can you?

DEI. Has to be.. no way could the American people have thought that a black man was right for the job.

Twice..

Huge tariffs in the US send up prices for everyone. A Chinese company facing 145% tariffs is only going to be able to compete in the US by offering huge discounts on wholesale prices to their distributors, and they will recoup that loss by increasing prices in other markets. And if LG, say, increase their prices by 10% in the UK to subsidise the big discounts they are forced to offer in the US, then even manufacturers that are unaffected by the tariffs, Samsung say, will raise their prices, because being underpriced in an inflationary market is just leaving money on the table.

@Mielikkithat would only happen in the very short term. If Chinese companies can only sell into a market by heavily discounting they’ll reduce supply to that market and focus on supplying other markets.
Raising prices on other competitive markets to pay for loss leaders in the US could well backfire unless everyone does it, otherwise you’re just selling stuff for 10% more than the market rate and can be easily undercut.
Uncertainty about pricing will drive global business away from the US, while other markets strike better, more appealing deals with each other.

They could always sell stuff without the "AI" shite and shave 25% off the price that way. No one would notice.

The bond and currency markets have started to treat the US like an emerging market economy instead of a global reserve. Dollar is down, bonds are up (which is going to matter when you consider how much debt Anerica is due to roll over) and the trust is gone.

Between the tariff changes, assault on the rule of law and DOGE cock-ups, Trump's administration seems determined to drag the country down to North Korea status.

I have learnt a lot more about the bond market than I ever knew before.

Thanks to YouTube!

And when you add in the decimation of education and crazy ideas like vaccines and cancer research, it gets even better.

Strolling in bright sunshine across the immaculately raked gravel of Paris's Tuileries gardens, Barbara and Rick Wilson from Dallas, Oregon, were not exactly in disguise. But earlier that morning, on their very first trip to France, Rick, 74, had taken an unusual precaution.

Before leaving his hotel, he'd taken a small piece of black tape and covered up the Stars and Stripes flag on the corner of his baseball cap.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kvqnx0dnno

Reminds me of one of the best lines from "Private Schulz" : "You can't get a German flag. They're not very popular"

History will record that after 2020 Trump decided he was going to take the US down for how it treated him. And with the wry twist that can only be seen in retrospect, it was the most citizens who made the most noise about being were most patriotic that did it for him.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-tariffs-2671754114/

@SerendipityJane I have a friend who immigrated to the US and has a European trip booked. She is deeply ashamed of being an American and is just thankful that no-one abroad would be able to tell as she doesn't have an American accent.
Sadly, covering up a flag on an item of clothing won't be enough.

@cakeorwine
Tariffs are applied at the moment the goods enter the charging nation.

What date the ship left the source port is not relevant as a ship may be carrying stuff from multiple ports loaded on multiple dates
and many containers will be groupage - hundreds of small consignments

Isn't that precisely why it's a bigly task, having to work out which container containing what, and from where, was loaded when?
They're probably writing software to accommodate all this, as we speak. Then there's the inputting of relevant data.
Collecting tariffs might take a while.