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 🤯

It’s part of India (which doesn’t share a border with China) apparently. Who knew.

The American iPhone will be more expensive because the American workers will expect decent wages. Surely it's a good thing for workers who manufacture phones to be paid decent wages? They can then spend their wages in the American economy to create more jobs.

That is fine as long as the expensive US made phone is purchased in commercially viable quantities @OonaStubbs

I think the previous USA Presidents were more dangerous, as along with Britain, they were trying to use the Russia/Ukraine situation to start WWIII as population control. While controlling the media, so people can't hear another opinion. Such as Russia Today news being taken off the TV and internet. Also the previous USA President gave up in Afghanistan so the Taliban now run it, so people there have few rights. Yet no politician mentions that. If they couldn't win against backwards extremists on donkeys with rusty weapons, then what chance against Russia?

Same as no politicians or media remind people that Afghanistan wasn't extremist until the USA were arming and training the extremists there in the 80s against Russia. Then the USA didn't care what the extremists were doing through the 90s, before 9/11. Also like how when British people were harmed in Tunisia and Manchester by extremists who trained in Libya after Gaddafi, no media reminds people of when the secret service whistle blower David Shayler told how Britain was going along with the USA funding Al Qaeda in Libya to k ill Gaddafi. Then after Gaddafi, the country became another ex tremist training camp. Same is going to happen in Syria, which was one of few middle east countries with many religions that lived together in peace.
If we're affected by USA tariffs, it's our own fault for thinking Farage wanted to leave the EU as cares about British people. When all he really wanted was to make sure the British economy stays closely linked with USA banks, encouraging people to live in greed and debt, so he can sell his get rich quick schemes based on stock market gambling.

I do feel sad for the millions who didn't vote for him. Which is about half of the voters. He likes to make out that he got this huge majority, but, while he did beat Kamala in the popular vote, it was actually fairly close.

Or everyone will not upgrade or swap to Samsung if they live outside the u.s. I've already swapped, decided not to book a u.s. holiday and I've stopped buying American as much as possible. No heinz, Danone etc... I check everything in my shopping basket online these days to avoid buying American.

We’re still getting clouted with tariffs in Canada. He’s dialled some back and reduced some, but they’re still there

What wrong with spooking the markets, causing global economic meltdown?

everything is wrong with how it has been executed, because the world is already destabilised and Trump is just adding to the uncertainty. Economic analyst do not like uncertainty.

have you got a pension fund? Investments? Well watch out because they'll be taking a hit. That's what's wrong with this. It's bloody irresponsible and not what we expect from a western democratic super power like US. I really feel for the people of US right now.

I am an iPhone user but would switch to Samsung at that price. So would everyone except the wealthy. iPhone would have to reduce their workforce in the US and perhaps accelerate automated production with few humans involved in order to compete.

Can you share a link confirming that the US has put tariffs on the Heard & McDonald Islands because I can't find any evidence of this.

The full list of tariffs and countries from Newsweek doesn't include these islands:

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-reciprocal-tariff-chart-2054514

Here’s a link

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/02/trump-tariffs-australia-uninhabited-heard-mcdonald-islands

Loved the way we got a special shoutout ( Australia) for being "wonderful people" and then bad for not allowing their beef into the country for bio-security reasons ( which most of the world was also doing in the early 2000's). It's a huge industry here so we'd like to keep it healthy thanks. Also we copped the 10% but we are in trade deficit to the USA. They sell more to us than we do to them. And our tariff to them is zero. So I'm not sure how he came up with "Zero then halve as 10%". And poor old Norfolk Island!! FFS they have enough trouble getting anything into the place ( no good harbour and tiny island in the middle of the Pacific) so I'm pretty sure they arent exporting anything at all. It's technically part of Australia so maybe that was why Oh god I don't know.It's utter madness.
He also went so hard on Asian countries, well who does he think they are going to align more closely with now - CHIIINNA . Idiot.

And to make it worse, he spent the first 20 minutes saying that the tariffs would be reciprocal, and then remembered his board and said "because we are so kind we are only going to do half of their tariffs" . Which is not reciprocal you moron. Also , apparently the way they worked out the tariffs was not on actual tariffs but on trade surpluses and then times by 3002 added 501 subtracted 6 and divided by 8, then halved it. Pretty sure that's right.As everyone keeps saying, what a time to be alive. And that union guy up there!! Gah! Head exploded and I turned it off before it finished.

in a few years time it will make for a very funny movie, secret individual tariffs, revealed just after the stock markets closed, a color coded chart and some geography quiz questions "who are nepal's closest neighbors"?
i feel sorry for the americans who think that modern industrial plants employ thousands of employees to find out most jobs are now automated and use 1/10th the personnel.
he must absolutely hate levi jeans they're manufactured in all those asian countries hit with the highest tariff.

It’s not even in alphabetical or ascending/descending order.. is it? Is it in any at all?

Well the world must have been selling a lot to the US to get everyone so riled.
Unfortunately the U.K. will probably miss this opportunity to kick some ass, reduce benefits (cos we can’t afford them not because we hate disabled people), tell people to stop wfh and tell kids to get into school as we need jobs and workers and are stuffed if we can’t get the economy moving.
Instead Labour and the Tories will continue bickering and whingeing about each other ,we’ll keep having immigrants come in and we’ll become more of a third world country.
And add Trump to the list of excuses for us being crap.

I don’t know a huge amount about Australian politics @medlobath.

If your US tariffs are currently zero but you buy a lot from them, are you likely to retaliate and impose 10% on them in return? What’s being said in your media?

I really want the orange buffoon to see everything blow up in his face, but I fear countries won’t be able to afford to stand up to him…

Can someone tell me if the tariffs apply to services as well as goods? I run a UK business and supply creative service to the US and I suspect I’m now fucked as they will use a US team - He is batshit crazy!!

He looks severely mentally ill. Voice of a pedophile (oddly feminine yet he despises women), no one is even attempting to save his dignity at this point :(

Another Aussie (also British) responding. No retaliation but the PM is encouraging us to boycott US products where possible.

The US also wants to have greater access to our pharmaceutical market and make more profit off us. Currently, the Australian government negotiates with Big Pharma to buy pharmaceuticals in large quantities at low prices and then we pay $30 per prescription at the chemist, which is lower than what Americans would pay without health insurance. People on social security pay even less. The pharmaceuticals also have to go through an approval process for safety etc which is considered to be too slow by Big Pharma. It probably is a bit slow but at least we can be sure it’s all safe.

Poor Big Pharma thinks our set up unfair to them and has been encouraging Trump to use the tariffs to try and break the Australian market open. However our PM has said that’s not changing.

We have a general election coming up next month and the opposition leader who is jokingly called Temu Trump has a difficult job trying to be patriotic against the tariffs and at the same time, appeasing the Trump supporters, which includes Australian coal mining billionaires Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer, who both adore Trump. We have a centre of Left government at the moment. They weren’t doing well but have started to pull ahead of the opposition now. We have compulsory voting too, which translates to 90%+ turnout, so that will probably help with maintaining political stability without lurching to extremes.

Thank you! That’s all really interesting. My extent of Aus politics is pretty much limited to the Giggle/Tickle case - we don’t hear much about it over here. Temu Trump 😂😂😂

I didn’t realise you had a GE coming up - I’ll try and follow that with online news. Much as I think left-leaning governments have caused issues in recent years (I’m very firmly left-leaning too!), the last thing we need is another government who’s sympathetic to Trump! The fewer powerful allies he has, the better, imo.

Funnily enough I’ve just been wondering what US goods I can boycott! We do use streaming services that I don’t especially want to cancel (autistic DC) - but food-wise I’d definitely be happy to try and drop US brands. Same for buying any goods. It seems like such a weak, small response but I don’t think we can do anything else - and if we all turned our back on US goods en masse, the message might get through!

@rivalsbinge it only applies to goods, not services. I’m also a freelancer who works almost exclusively for the US market in a creative capacity from the U.K. so I’d be completely screwed if tariffs applied. I’m hoping nothing will change!

My only slight concern is that the creative industry I’m connected to has strong links with the US car market - including cars from overseas shipped into the US. So if that all falls apart, the work that’s available to me will evaporate….. Squeaky bum time, for sure.

@SpidersAreShitheads Another Aussie (also British) piling in.

Australia is in the middle of a federal election right now, called on 29th of March voting on 3rd May. This is the same as a General Election in the UK.

Obviously what Trump was up to is on everyone's' mind and the Opposition chap, Dutton (Liberal, i.e. Conservative) shot himself in the foot very early on by critiquing the PM Albanese (Labor) for not treating Trump as he would if he was PM. The coulda woulda shoulda playbook, instead of seeing the world picture and being a teeny bit more statesmanlike. It was not well-received even by his own side, if silence is anything to go by.

I'll be plain by saying that I'm very far indeed from Liberal, but even by their standards he'd be utterly shit. Albanese isn't marvellous, but is a safer pair of hands. Voting is compulsory in Australia, though of course you can spoil your ballot paper, but It results in very high turnouts and less extreme governments by world standards. Dutton is a Trump-fawner and Murdoch arse-licker of the first water but has changed his tune a little since this morning. Most of the press is owned by Rupert Murdoch and it shows.

He is clearly unwell. He has always had a tenuous grasp on reality but now we’re watching the live action of a future disaster movie unfolding in front of our eyes.

No our PM held a press conference this morning , just after the "windy orange rant" ( just my term for it, and him) and his kindergarten board; and said no we will not become involved in a trade war. We are a free and open economy. China tried this on us just a few years ago and barred our barley ( random) and crayfish and wine. We just sold it to other countries. So they can take their $3b worth of beef they buy from us , (we sell $15b to the world in total) and shove it. There's a queue for Aussie beef. On the other hand we could stop buying American anything. That I could get on board with. ( BTW they can export beef to Australia as long as it is frozen)

Things that didn't happen......