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 🤯

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ftse-100-live-global-stock-markets-trump-tariffs-chaos-074449738.html?guccounter=1

LIVE: Trillions wiped off global stock markets as Trump's tariffs unleash chaos

Of course. Unthinkable that could happen. There are checks and balances in USA, it's famous for them. And look how effective they've proved to be.

Don’t bank on it.

That will put the price up on certain chocolate biscuit when you p-p-pick up a penguin.

Ok again with my zero economics training that is just silly. Most of those are in education/otherwise occupied. Chat GPT tells me the long term unemployed rate in the US equals 0.5% of the population. You would imagine a percentage of these may have low or no skills.

So the actual pool of people available to do jobs will be small. And they are unlikely to be trained in the areas needed. How long will it take tp set up production facilities? 5 years? Maybe even 10 years and in the meantime Trump, in one swoop has increased the cost of living. A high cost of living being one of the things that got him into office in the first place.

It doesn’t make sense.

@odras and don’t forget not all these people actually live in the areas these new jobs might crop up. I’m not confident we’re suddenly going to see a surge in relocation packages.

Why should they work, when their needs are supplied cheaply by sweat shop workers across the globe who have to practically give the stuff they make to America, because in their part of the world, other countries cannot afford to import?

The point is that Trump should build the factories first, but even then, he could not match the prices of cheap factory imports from Asia. He could have started that in his first term.

Only when Musk loses his billions will the penny drop.

I wonder if he models himself on a slave master and loves cracking the whip? That is how I have pictured him for a long time. People voted for him because he talked down to them, mainly words of one syllable, and repeating the odd phrase, so that you would think he was addressing a kindergarten. That is what wins him votes, he talks to them like children and they vote for him, because American education is not as good as the western world.

He cannot be trusted. He has wiped the value of shares all around the world in an effort to make America appear richer. That affects savings, pension pots, and will also affect Americans.

Trump could very well be stupid but he’s got two economic advisors who seem to know their stuff. So there is definitely some logical reason for this.

If there is, @Odras , it’s about enriching Trump and his cronies, not anyone else.

Of the economically inactive, working age people, most are indeed students, early retirees, stay at home parents or disabled.

How generous of you to "give them a chance" to work in the manufacturing jobs that Trump is looking to create...

The number of true unemployed people is around 7 million, although the US will likely see massive job losses in the coming year.

Can you cite one and any reasoning? If you mean Bessent and Lutnick, um, no. One's off his rocker (Lutnick) and one has no idea what's going on or how we got there (Bessent). Look up their clips from yesterday and today.

If you want a hollow laugh, google 'Lutnick beef'

Well, if Florida gets their child labour bill through, the kids can join the veterans who've been fired from their government jobs by DOGE, and the senior citizens whose social security checks have gone amiss, on the factory floor. The good news is that the bill has provisions for overnight shifts for the 14 and 15 year olds, so productivity can really be ratcheted up.

How could America possibly get greater than that?

"Magnificent 7" stocks all down.

Alphabet
Amazon
Apple
Meta platforms
Microsoft
Nvidia and
Tesla

Being widely reported , you can't help but wonder about all this.

Donald Trump elected not to attend the dignified transfer of 4 fallen U.S. soldiers at Dover Air Force Base. The soldiers died in Lithuania during a training exercise.

Trump is instead doing personal Trump empire business at the LIV Golf dinner in Florida with Saudis.

The Dow has dropped over 2,000 points, its biggest drop since June 2020. The index is down nearly 5% for the day.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite have declines of nearly 6%. Nasdaq is set to close in bear market territory, 20% below its recent peak. (Guardian)

Yep, Trump has today quipped, referencing the stock market decline, that now’s the time to get rich.

Reckon he’s forgotten that swathes of the electorate are struggling to buy food let alone stocks.

So much for caring about them 🙄

@Odras look up Cambodia and year zero. Some of this smells of that.

Isolate them. Make them them poor. Make them stupid. Blame it on everyone else. Remove the education dept, go for the academics.

Oh my goodness, yes. Embarrassing

This can't be real. I'm so shocked. 😧

Sadly, it is

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-child-labor-laws/index.html

Of course, otherwise, why would he be putting America first, and great, and richer.

Nothing he does is intended to do anything more than make America richer on the backs of the rest of the world.

Not sure if his intentions will be forthcoming though. Does he really think the Chinese would be unable to get the better of him?

There you have it: Saudis. Saudi Arabia was at war with Iran and they were on opposite sides of the war in Yemen. Then came that ceasefire.

Obviously, when American envoys met with Russian envoys in Saudi Arabia, part of the thanks for hosting was to bomb the houthis in the Yemen, ostensibly to stop them attacking shipping in the Red Sea, but I bet it also helped make the Arabian Sea a bit safer too.

We still don't know what Trump and Putin talked about on the 90 minute phone call. I think it was to carve up Ukraine between them. It was also a deal to make safe passage in the Black Sea for American shipping when it starts exporting the rare minerals Trump thought he would mine until the mines were exhausted.

Not for nothing was Russia left off the list. It is who is not on it that is important.

You've hit the nail on the head here. The problem on this thread is that because of many poster's loathing of Trump as an individual (an opinion by the way that I share) then they have to believe that all Trump's policies must be bad. It is possible for the individual to be bad but some of their policies correct. Unfortunately their dislike of the individual blinds them in understanding economics.

Trump's tariffs are not about redressing unfair tariffs placed on the US (for example the 39% tariff allegedly placed by the EU on US imports is factually incorrect). Instead the tariffs announced by Trump are about redressing the world's highest trade deficit at $1.2 trillion, incidentally the UK has the second highest trade deficit at $270 billion. In addition it also about re industrialising the US.

Consistently running a $1 trillion plus trade deficit is unsustainable. It leads to job losses in the home country as manufacturing becomes dependent on cheaper foreign labour - such job losses are not simply seen in unemployment figures but through large numbers being economically inactive where they don't even bother trying to find a job.

It also leads to high foreign debt ( for example the massive trade debt owed to China by the US). Servicing just the interest on this debt becomes problematic and represents another massive outflow of cash.

It also leads to a lowering in the exchange rate of the country running a large trade deficit meaning that imported goods become more expensive leading to inflation.

The ultimate outcome of persistent trade deficits is either a default on foreign debt (as seen in the Latin American debt crisis) or the imposition of tariffs which we are currently seeing by the Trump administration.

Its simple economics but so many posters are so blinded by their dislike of Trump that they refuse to understand the economic rationale of these tariffs.

So the inference is that you, unlike most of us posters who are allegedly too blinded by our hatred of Trump to think straight, see that what he's done and the way he's done it, as making sense?

Because the rest of us are in agreement with the FT, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Larry Summers, and Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman, all noted for their expertise in economics, think this is bad, poorly thought out and implemented policy.

What is it that you understand about 'simple economics' that they don't?

Because the Economist, FT and WSJ are viewing the tariffs from a global economic perspective which is indeed negative as those countries running a trade surplus with the US will be adversely impacted. Paul Krugman is a very good example of seeing economics through a global lens with his views on global economies of scale.

But if you view the tariffs from a purely US perspective then you can see the logic. It reduces the trade deficit and encourages the re industrialisation of the US economy. Now I fully agree that this is economically not great for say China but that is not the US's problem.