Is anyone watching this Trump car crash?

[soundsys]

WTF is happening? It’s like some bizarre performance art piece.

He’s holding up signs and shouting and throwing out hats it’s just 🤯

This made me smile 😀
in addition I think he has a very small willy

I won’t pretend to understand it but doesn’t China hold a lot of USD currency? My wobbly understanding of it is they could sink the dollar if they chose to.

Ah yes! Trump, man of the people and saviour of the working class….. or maybe not.

Trump loathes and despises the working class, like Elon does. They are his tribe of poodles though "I love the poorly educated" and the poorly educated applaud wildly "hurrah, Bigly loves us! Close more schools. Ban more books. Make us remain ignorant and pliable." Infuriating. Anything good that occurs for the working class will be incidental, not intentional.

Poor Americans, now forced by tariffs to buy shit US cars. 😪

Yes but the sales tax amount is irrelevant because it’s not a tariff on imports. It’s a tax that applies all the time. You understand the difference right?

I reckon he tops up his fake tan with bronzer, sometimes if you see a close up (ugh) of his face it looks really powdery and badly blended. Who knows, nobody would take beauty tips from him

For the sake of Americans I hope it does too, although he does seem to have missed a couple of glaringly obvious steps/holes if bringing manufacturing back to the USA is his goal.

It’s an interesting part of the human condition that we like to have an idol to follow. Times like this make me think we’ve probably got the balance right in Britain with having a royal family with no real power for those inclined to put people on a pedestal leaving us free to jeer those in put in charge of governing our interests.

I can’t work out if this poster doesn’t understand or is being actively obtuse.

ChatGPT doesn’t have access to cardboard placards

Newly onshored jobs? That won’t happen. The days of factories filled with workers is long gone. If there is some reindustrialisation in the US, it will be largely automated-workers in the US are too expensive. Even then, it takes years to plan and build and readjust supply chains. Most jobs in, for example, the car industry aren’t car builders. They work in finance, leasing and insurance-all service industries. They US runs a services economy.

I actually think that's a good point and a big part of the problem. His cultural mindset has never moved past the 80s. He understands almost nothing about the modern world. And I think that appeals to a lot of his voters - let's go back to coal mining and the days when women and non-whites knew their place.

Bank of America and Barclays have both issued warnings of a “high risk” of American recession this year.

Agree 100% though i do assume you mean the 1880s?

Polling in the states, even among republicans is the majority are against what he is doing.

US Sec of state, in a speech today is demanding Europe commits to spend 5% of GDP on its defence....

We really do need to pull away from the USA in all ways possible, they really are not a friendly nation to Europe/UK anymore, tbh we'd be better siding with China than Trumps America, we've no idea what he might do next....

So it all becomes clear

(source https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/apr/03/business-news-live-updates-trump-tarrifs-asian-markets-nikkei-asx-wall-st-dow-jones-dollar-euro)

'US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has said that the Trump administration is talking to all major trading partners throughout the world about ways to bring down the new tariffs announced last night.

Speaking to CNBC, Lutnick explained that other countries will have to change their rules to allow more imports of US products.
He says:

“The key is, will they take our agricultural products? Will they treat us fairly? Can they treat us fairly? And the answer is, over time, that is going to be yes.
“American products are going to be better sold elsewhere in the world.”'

Stock markets are opening in the US. All going well.

The S&P 500 slipped more than 3%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,200 points, or 3%.

Nike down 10%. Amazon and Goldman Sachs down 6%.

Right. So it's all the bigly negotiator? Bringing the world to the brink to make Australians buy shitty beef?

Totally worth it.

They just don’t seem to understand that fundamentally we don’t want their cars, beef, chicken etc.

If Chat GPT is learning from Trump then we’re doomed.

So putting VAT aside the UK charges tariffs on imports from the US. These vary depending on the product but are generally between 8 and 10%.

For example beef imports (and I am not talking about GM beef but beef that passes UK standards) has a 12% levy.

Whereas a pair of Levi jeans (and other US clothing imports) attract a tariff of 8%.

Imports of cars from the US are at 10% tariff.

So this idea that the 10% tariff imposed on the UK exports is somehow in retaliation for VAT at 20% is nonsense. If the UK removed tariffs on imports from the US then the UK would be in a better position to argue against tariffs on exports from the UK to the US.

Speculation on the radio this morning that many of the countries that have been part of the China belt and road initiative have been hit with punitive tariffs.

VAT is charged to UK citizens as well as anyone else who buys British goods either in the UK or abroad.

Surely Trump should be happy for VAT to be charged because it makes British goods more expensive as that is what he wants so that prices on American goods are more competitive?

They hold a lot of US debt, as opposed to USD currency (I'm not sure what damage they can do due to the latter). But actually Japan holds more US debt than China, and the UK has almost as much.

Any country could start a massive sell-off of its US debt, but then they would be cutting off their nose to spite their face, unless there was some equivalent geopolitical benefit. They would probably be selling at a substantial loss and/or reducing the value of the US debt that they still held.

It's a bit like Elon Musk's wealth (which, for the avoidance of doubt, I think is obscene). He can't convert the $500 billion or whatever his companies are worth into cash and buy Freddos with it, because a large part of the value of the shares is the very fact that he is prepared to hold on to them.

Ditto, to a lesser extent, with using Norway's sovereign wealth fund to finance Ukraine and European defence more widely (which has been proposed on the basis that if this isn't the "rainy day" that you're saving for, what is?). It's worth $1.8 trillion, but if you try to unload all of that at once, you're not going to get $1.8 trillion for it, partly because of market confidence and partly because there just isn't that amount of cash sloshing around waiting to buy blue chip stocks.

Or an old Eurovision Song Contest score board🤣.