Tariffs: Why Is It Fine When Others Use Them, But Not the US?

[Swirlythingy2025]

Lots of countries use tariffs to protect their own industries like China, India, even the EU. But when the US does it, especially under someone like Trump, people act like it’s a global crisis. Why?

He probably thinks they’re just very short nuns.

Three things.

These threats of targets are making other countries run around like headless chicken to renegotiate deals with the US on better terms for the US.

There's lot of talk of how these tariffs will result in interest rates going down. This is a man with a vested interest in real estate.

Disaster capitalism and shocks to the market are great for wealth individuals who can then buy up stuff at a reduced cost or have actively benefitted from the lower price of land..

Other major trading partners like China and the EU are not running around like headless chickens trying to make deals with the US.
China retaliated and the EU is taking its time and being measured.
Canada is looking for alternative.
South Korea and Japan are doing deals with China.

I thought about responding to Tricho but knew it would be useless. How do countries suddenly build factories on that tiny uninhabited island? How many factories would fit there and How long would that take to put the infrastructure necessary, move workers there (and how many?). Some arguments/people are not worth engaging with. They've made up their minds and nothing will change that

Exactly
Hes so dumb that almost every country in the world barring China and Canada are literally failing over themselves right now to sign trade deals that are more favourable to the US than the ones they’ve got now. Literally begging to give the US a better deal…but it’s trump who is thick?!

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdNRg49f/

People are up in arms because his introduction of blanket tarries is bullshit. Him placing tariffs on islands inhabited by penguins and countries that the US have surpluses with, indicate he clearly doesn’t understand how trade defecits work. In the case of Lesotho they have a trade deficit with the US simply because they have materials that the US want and the US has a-lot of shit that they can’t afford.

As for bringing back manufacturing back, opening factories take years and where prey tell are the skilled labour coming from? Florida is currently rolling back employment safeguards for children because getting rid of immigrants has meant there aren’t enough adults left willing to pick produce. Yes there will be CEO’s willing to kiss the ring by making the right noises to placate Trump but given that it can take five years and over to setup a factory, most will wait it out until he leaves office or when he changes his mind (which given his irractic tendencies could be in the next five minutes).

Trump doesn’t give two shits about the plight of Americans, the man is a grifter at heart. The whole tariffs debacle is just another cynical way for him to exercise power. CEO’s and political leaders will stroke his ego enough to get what they want in the short term, knowing that things will go back to normal when he goes.

Targeted tariffs can be a useful instrument but the way Trump has used them just means that the average American will pay a lot more for everything.

The sycophants within the Republican Party who are “backing” tariffs were bashing their use only a few months ago, the before and after clips of them flip flopping is embarrassing.

The way Trump has implemented tariffs will lead to some very hard times because in addition to tariffs, federal employees are being fired left right and centre and organisations that protect the interests of Americans are being dismantled.

Trumps behaviour is straight out of the dictator’s playbook. Targeting university funding and deporting or sanctioning people who don’t agree with his agenda, defying judges rulings and calling for their impeachment, dismantling institutions that protect people’s rights are just a few of the actions of someone who wants absolute power.

Tariffs are a blunt instrument at best but in the hands of someone who isn’t very clever and has narcissistic tendencies, are very dangerous. I’d be interested to see how much damage his irrational and narcissistic tendencies will cause before the institutions I acted to protect people, really step up.

Because he's the devil incarnate, apparently. I've also heard lots of people bemoaning the UK's 10% but hardly commenting on the fact that's half of the 20% he's slapped on Europe.

Trump is a bit stupid.

If you want your people to buy locally produced goods, you have to wean them off a centuries old Western habit of using cheap foreign labour to produce the vast amount of goods you want to produce.

The only way america can cut say, Taiwan out of the supply chain is to force its own people to accept worse wages and working conditions, to do so.

Evidence? And I’m going to need more than a quote from Trump saying 50 countries have phoned us up.

Slightly off topic to the thread, but that would depend what country wanted to do that, the money they have and people power they have.

An example would be the Spratley and Paracel Islands. These were originally all unoccupied and inhabitable.
They aren't now and contain some pretty beefy infrastructure. They have been altered and constructed artificially by China.

Well he hasn't tariffed Russia because he's in negotiations with them due to the war, but Ukraine has a 10% tariff.

That's all.

He doesn’t like penguins because they are half black.

As much as I think The Donald is nuts, his & his advisors reasoning for putting tariffs on 'Penguins' is due to this:

'According to export data from the World Bank, the islands have, over the past few years, usually exported a small amount of products to the US.
But in 2022 the US imported $1.4m (A$2.3m; £1.1m) from the territory, external, nearly all of it unnamed "machinery and electrical" products.
The Guardian has also reported that an analysis of US import data and shipping records suggests that tariffs imposed on the Heard and McDonalds Islands, as well as Norfolk Island, are based on incorrect data.
It found shipments had been wrongly labelled as coming from the territories, rather than their actual places of origin.'
Source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly8xlj0485o

Also @Tricho is correct with her loophole reasoning (as explained by Trump's advisors):

'The US Commerce Secretary has defended the country's decision to impose tariffs on a group of uninhabited islands, which are populated only by penguins and seals.
The imposition of tariffs on the Heard and McDonald islands was meant to close "ridiculous loopholes" and would prevent other countries from shipping through the islands to reach the US, Howard Lutnick told the BBC's US partner CBS.'
Source:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce84jr5mvnno.amp

The rest of the world should cut off the US and trade amongst ourselves.

China harvests organs from political prisoners, their police force is disgustingly bribed to the point where they will turn a blind eye to children being kidnapped for the sex and organ trade, vulnerable people die on the streets because the government doesn't care, exploits children in sweatshops and Africans in precious metal mines, cause countless extinction of endangered animals all around the world because of the import of animal parts but you're cheering them on to "stand up to him" because le orange man bad, woof.

So we can take from all that is that The Donald & his advisors take everything at face value & don't check the veracity of information given/accquired/read.

I'd like to say/think that most people do check information given but that's not always the case, I'm sorry to say.

Howard Lutnick’s IQ is marginally below that of the penguins. He’s also lying to cover the Trump admin’s arse. There is no loophole that needs closing. Shipping through the islands would give a tariff the same as the place that stuff originated from as tariffs are based on country of origin not where it is shipped from. You can’t close a loophole that doesn’t exist.

There is no reason at all that Norfolk Island needs a different tariff to Australia or that St Pierre and Michelon which is part of the EU gets an astronomical tariff of 49% while the rest of the EU gets 20%. (And this one is funny, it’s a single shipment of lobster from July 2024 that’s caused the issue)

Yep I agree with that @RafaistheKingofClay

Though penguins have a much higher IQ than the orange man & his cronies.

So many wedding takes here

This was the first known-source result from my very quick google. It's NPR but the story's very basic history, so unlikely to be wrong in this case. It's a neat little lesson in how trade tariffs backfire.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/02/nx-s1-5348033/us-economy-tariffs-trump

If that was the case, why hasn't he put tariffs on any of the Channel Islands?

These islands are already inhabited and are just off the UK and French coasts so easily accessible.

If he was genuinely just trying to close off any loopholes he hasn't done a very good job of it, has he!

Thanks for explaining the penguins business.

Wasn't there someone who claimed ownership of the entire moon, because of some legal loophole, and then sold bits of it in the Innovations catalogue?

It looks like protectionism would look if applied by someone who once had a conversation on a golf course with someone who read a book about it in maybe 1972, and then they didn't develop the policy themselves or in discussion with experts but gave it to an unpaid 22 year old intern who had no idea what they were doing but made up some kind of answer for their boss by asking chatGPT for a formula, and the resulting policy was then discussed at a meeting of people whose main qualification for being there was their ability to say 'Thank you for your genius Mr President' without laughing.