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 🤯

@Zebedee999 Nobody is bitching about an EU tariff of 39% because it doesn’t exist.

I’ve already commentted on a previous post why manufacturing jobs will not come back in a big way. Take your watch manufacturer. Where do you think they get raw materials? Imports. How long does it take to set up factories and adjust supply chains? Years. How do you think US Labour laws and pay compare to the far east? Expensive. How do you think businesses can plan for investment when they have no idea anything negotiated can be undone by a capricious individual? They can’t. And we have a tariff free trade agreement with the EU. Our biggest drag with the EU is non tariff barriers which we voted to put up. Please do t tell me you believed all that nonsense about cakes and eating it.

Most of Europe's dependence on the US is at their behest, and to their benefit. We have been the worst in Europe at prostrating to America, clinging onto the fiction of the ' special relationship' , meaning our defence is now dependent on US fighters and a US nuclear deterrent, and we willingly just import US food culture, resulting in our diet being the most processed in Europe. They have never acted altruistically. Much of the reason we cannot make our own stuff is yes, mainly because goods are so much cheaper to make in the Far East ( to the huge benefit of US companies like Apple etc) but because Reagan and Thatchers policies decimated the industrial working class base of both countries and didnt invest in those areas to develop any other industries in the pursuit of the financial sector. You can't now magic up skilled tradespeople or even people who can do factory work or agricultural work at speed by just chucking people off the dole. Skills that were passed down from experienced to young people have now disappeared. I actually hope that what happens is that we become closer again to Europe and other more reliable partners and makes more stuff at home, which environmentally is far more sustainable.

That’s not true. Free trade agreements exist-zero tariffs but often include clauses on safety standards, animal welfare, environmental considerations, worker’s rights etc etc. we have a free trade agreement with the EU-zero tariffs-but have to demonstrate our compliance with the negotiated conditions. We don’t allow imports of meat into this country where the animal has been given growth hormone. Nothing to do with tariff but to do with safe consumption and to some extent, protecting our domestic farming industry.

It will be interesting to see if this drives the UK back towards the EU as a trade partner - the gravity model dictates that you do the most trade with your nearest neighbours.

Because the taxation regime is different they have state tax. You can’t compare vat to import tax(???!?!).

Vat is applied to all goods in UK irrespective of manufacture location.

US is a low/lower taxed economy. Doesn’t mean we penalise US goods. You do know that don’t you?

Your analysis is mostly correct. It's how we got to a situation where everything you buy is made in China.

But people, by and large, vote for this (or rather, for governments that allow it). You can make a good case for protectionism, and Switzerland (for example) implements a form of it: If you go shopping across the border in Germany or France, you can't bring back more than 500g of meat per person, to protect the Swiss meat industry. But ultimately, it's very hard to wean people off "cheap stuff". When the UK–Australian trade deal was signed, everyone said "Oh the poor animals, I'm not going to buy Australian meat even if it's cheaper, they have lower animal welfare standards", but guess what, you are doing that, every time you buy any processed beef product, or eat in a restaurant, or don't check the label at the supermarket or butcher.

However, what's really bonkers here is that what Trump is doing with tariffs has nothing to do with protecting American jobs or production/welfare standards. It's literally lashing out against almost every country in the world on the basis of completely bizarre numbers.

I'm not sure many people are arguing against all tariffs, rather against tariffs as a blunt tool rather than a precision strategy. By all means, tariff the things you can produce domestically in large volume, the way the US has typically done with tobacco. But don't tariff things you can't produce domestically, and specifically don't tariff things needed to produce other things domestically, i.e. fertiliser for crops.

Have you all seen the stock market graph? Very reminiscent of Liz Truss, a victim of whatever she was blaming last time she was stampjng her foot and shouting 'not my fault'. Am expecting the same from Bigly very soon. Not his fault, left wing beasts will have undermined him. Speaking of the Left, Mrs Trump grew up in a Soviet state and her father was a member of the Communist party. No wo der she can put up with Bigly. Trained for it.

Trump has left the WH to go golfing in Florida this weekend, all is bigly fine according to him

You understand that the numbers in the right hand column aren’t tariffs right? They are fantasy figures worked out by dividing the US’s trade deficit by the amount it imports from a given territory.

This is how St Pierre and Miquelon ended up with a 99% tariffs based on the fact that they export about $3M of shellfish to the US per year but don’t buy anything back.

Speaking of the Left, Mrs Trump grew up in a Soviet state

Without wishing to defend her or him in any way: Mrs Trump grew up in Slovenia, the richest part of Yugoslavia, which — while it was under a Communist government — was very much not a Soviet state. I visited there in 1982 and found Citroen dealerships and hairdressers selling L'Oreal products. In 1992, the last year before independence, Slovenia's per-capita GDP was higher than Spain's.

Post-WW2 Communism was complicated and Yugoslavia had a tense relationship with the Soviet Union. When Tito (who was himself Slovenian) died, the travel agents were advertising "Visit the USSR before it visits you".

Indeed, I mean no ill to Mrs Trump other than suggesting growing up under Communism, Tito or not, was good preparation for developing the will of steel she must possess to have put up with her later life as Mrs T.

The b'stard is taxing the Penguins of Heard & McDonalds Islands. How low can you stoop????

Ah but precision tariffs will target those industries that are most dependent on exports. For example if the UK imposed a tariff on Korean steel exports to the UK in order to protect the UK steel then Korea might target Scottish whisky which is heavily export dependent. Now the Koreans can't produce Scotch whisky but they can replace it with US or Japanese whisky.

Alternatively on products such as say coffee which is not produced in the US then higher prices will simply mean a lower consumption.

Or there is the replacement approach where imported bananas are heavily tariffed so that consumers switch to say Florida oranges. Or they switch to countries that have lower tariffs on bananas for example Australian bananas.

You are correct that the figures in Trump's chart yesterday are not based on what the actual tariffs against the US are (for example the EU does not have a 39%tariff on imports from the US). Rather they are based on trade imbalances.

As such these tariffs should be seen as trying to reduce trade imbalances rather than seeking "tariff equity or fairness ".

Hmm - that clearly hasn't happened with the success of Shein in the UK has it?

Sorry, but the US does have sales tax, which is what VAT is. It varies from state to state, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Keep going though; eventually you may come up with something true.

Frivolous but I have been taking a close look at his orange face for a while now.

I notice white around his eyes, a distinct hairline of white and white around his eyebrows. So I think this is all make up rather than sunbeds. He has also gone so very orange. Leaning into that stereotype of himself.

I wonder if Melania is doing his make up. It’s clear she hates him as much as most of us do and it’s clearly the only explanation as to why he looks so ridiculous.

But so what? How is this good for anyone?

VAT is radically different from a sales tax, except from the point of view of a final retail consumer (and even then, in five states there is no sales tax — there are shops on the Massachusetts–New Hampshire border where the showroom is in MA but the till is in NH because there's no sales tax there.) It's just that if you do have VAT, you can use it as a sales tax as well. Hence why Purchase Tax was abolished in 1973 when the UK joined the EEC, where having VAT is mandatory (not least because the first 0.3% of VAT goes to finance the EEC/EU).

If a European company buys an American machine tool to make components that ultimately end up in fighter jets ordered by the government, VAT will be paid at all stages along the chain, with each factory paying VAT on the selling price and deducting the VAT that it paid for the materials. When an American production chain does the same thing, no tax is payable at any point along the line.

So while Trump is not correct to claim that VAT is a tariff, VAT is indeed something that the US does not have, and US industrial importers do not generally have to take VAT or sales tax into account.

That's right. There was someone on the news who made that very clear. It would have made more sense if Trump had set in motion more factories before he started this trade war. Does it matter though? I think it more likely that Trump is trying to get the already struggling economies in the southern hemisphere even worse. That will certainly make America richer, which he said today. It has gone from being great, to first, now to richer.

Lets imagine how richer America can get:

The American brands are made cheaply abroad, at lower cost, yet sell high in America. Will adding more to the tariff put America first? Trump thinks so. The way he achieves it may not be so acceptable. We could see sweatshops in Asia burning down again.

The only way America can enrich itself is if the southern hemisphere countries where they are made reduce price of designer goods like Nike. The factories cut wages and manufacturing costs to reduce the prices even further. American retailers will not reduce the price to their customers, They will get richer, pay more taxes and so on, and at the bottom of all that pressure are the manufacturers, running sweatshops with slave labour, and not only cutting their costs, but having to pay America for the privilege of buying their goods in tariffs.

THAT, FOLKS, IS MODERN SLAVERY and Trump is the slave master, and if Americans think that is OK, then there is something wrong with Americans.

Because large and persistent trade imbalances cause job losses, economic hardship in affected localised areas (eg steel towns) increased foreign debt, currency fluctuations, inflation and general economic instability.

Yes, I wonder what products the penguins were putting tariffs on for the US. Guano?

its likely to be a negotiating tactic I reckon. Think this quote from trump after the announcement was telling :
He said this put the US “in the drivers seat.”
“Every country is calling us. That’s the beauty of what we do,” he said. “If we would have asked these countries to do us a favor. They would have said no. Now they will do anything for us.”

not sure what concessions or favours he’s after but it shows he just wants to avoid diplomatic negotiations and jump to threats. He’ll probably get what he wants but he could have got the same outcome from more traditional means.

the short term destabilisation will be bad and the long term disconnect from America by traditional allies will be a big global structural shift.

I'd like to thank the posters here for providing me with so much relevant detail & food for thought!

I run an "Ethics Discussion Group" (in Oz) at the local library. Topics are arranged in advance, however tomorrow the topic is:

"Let's Talk All Things Trump. Australia & the USA are 2 very different countries, but we have a long-established alliance with USA. With the shifting political scene in the USA, is the alliance relevant?"

This thread has educated me. I'm not presenting this session but I'm now more able to contribute to the discussion.

Protect the penguins! They were doing just fine by themselves last I checked