Trump Policies & Actions Mega-Thread

[Husseinisdoingfine]

Donald Trump even slapped tariffs on an Island which has no people, only penguins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heard_Island_and_McDonald_Islands

[WikiRando]

The funny part is that the blanket tariffs were supposedly to prevent middlemen yet the differences between even nearby nations can be so stupidly huge.

Those nations already well integrated in supply chains and satisfy other cost considerations can use it to their advantage to take an almost finished good, slap their name on it, and export it to the US.

The catch is if they do that they will improve their trade balance with the US which invites more tariffs if they keep up this nonsense. Lol

Having said that the environment is still worse off as it encourages less international trade.

 Also, to put things into context, the whole tariffs and trade war thing has been going around since Trump's first term in 2016 and the economic system has not been destroyed yet. Although this is probably the biggest escalation so far. 

Tariffs are flat one time changes in prices, inflation is the rate of change. Worry about inflation. When the growth slows there will be less inflation.

Also it's not binary between boom and bust. You can have meh growth meh inflation 

Edited Sunday at 09:56 PM by WikiRando

[Joshe]

Prices going up bro. IMO, there’s a near zero chance Trump’s tariff bs will lead to a healthy, stable economy. I’m no economist, so I mostly rely on simple heuristics to arrive here. Like, an absolute fool and lunatic who knows nothing about complex systems, nor interested in learning about how they work, who randomly tweaks dials and pushes buttons on a 10,000 parameter control board, will fuck shit up with near certainty. 

It’s also likely not just a one time price change. You think Trump won’t shift on this multiple times? He’ll increase or decrease tariffs as he sees fit to dole out reward and punishment. Next time Zelenskyy doesn’t meet his “thank you” quota, he might get slapped with an extra 5%, or if a fascist regime builds a monument in Trump’s honor, they might earn 0%. 

If these tariffs remain, when we reach what some would like to think of as equilibrium, it will just be cope, and the US and global economy will be significantly less healthy than before the tariffs, and they likely won’t know it due to the complexity of the topic and propaganda that will shape public opinion over the next several years. Paying higher prices for everything will get normalized, while the Trump admin assures everyone America is stronger and richer than ever. And they’ll have deceptive charts to prove it. Kind of like that chart that mislead everyone into thinking Vietnam imposed a 90% tariff on US goods, when in reality it’s 1.2%. 

Right wing media will be looking for “Trump was right, he’s the business genius we always knew he was” angles for the next few years to make up for this colossal fuckup. It’s going to be so annoying listening to their viewers proclaim Trump’s tariffs were genius and worked out well for the next few years. 

[Leo Gura]

@Joshe Yup.

Tariffs is like the one hammer Trump has in his toolbox to make himself feel like a king, so he will keep hammering away.

It's like giving a manic and angry child a hammer in kindergarten and unleashing him on all the other kids.

Edited Monday at 02:48 AM by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

17 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Joshe Yup.

Tariffs is like the one hammer Trump has in his toolbox to make himself feel like a king, so he will keep hammering away.

It's like giving a manic and angry child a hammer in kindergarten and unleashing him on all the other kids.

Yet, even authoritarian leaders such as Xi Jinping or Putin don’t impose tariffs on other countries unless they got hit with tariffs from that country or countries.

Trump could’ve just sit back and not touched Biden’s economy and would’ve gotten a major amount of credit for the prosperity and strength of the US economy under him while he just plays golf at Mar-A-Lago.

Edited Monday at 03:06 AM by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

@Hardkill Xi and Putin are smart. Trump is a raging ignoramous.

Putin has a PhD in economics. Probably a fake one, but still.

Edited Monday at 03:34 AM by Leo Gura

[WikiRando]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Hardkill Xi and Putin are smart. Trump is a raging ignoramous.

Plus the US as a nation just has so much more power. Trump came into power when the US was at a strong position (as it always has been).  Xi and Putin respect hierarchy and they know they're not number 1. Russia will never be and China just isn't there yet. 

 

4 hours ago, Joshe said:

Prices going up bro. 
 

They're always going up. The question is not if they're going up or not, the question is what is the rate prices are going up. That's why I said inflation is the rate of change, but tariffs are one time flat increases. I'm not saying prices could decrease. That would be deflation which basically not a thing. The point is, regarding prices, focus on the measured trajectory, not on the sporadic events. 
 

 

4 hours ago, Joshe said:

It’s also likely not just a one time price change.
 

I'm not saying this is the last wave of tariffs. There have been tariffs from Trump since he took office in 2016 and will feasibly continue.

 

 

Edited Monday at 06:55 AM by WikiRando

[WikiRando]

3 hours ago, Joshe said:

the US and global economy will be significantly less healthy than before the tariffs, and they likely won’t know it due to the complexity of the topic and propaganda that will shape public opinion over the next several years. Paying higher prices for everything will get normalized, while the Trump admin assures everyone America is stronger and richer than ever. And they’ll have deceptive charts to prove it. Kind of like that chart that mislead everyone into thinking Vietnam imposed a 90% tariff on US goods, when in reality it’s 1.2%. 

Yes, the environment is way worse now

Yes he is already using propaganda metrics that's why those tariff numbers were total BS, the numbers were so blatantly whatever Donald Trump wanted. The nuance there is that there are real non-tariff trade barriers, like regulatory uncertainty for foreign companies in China, etc. 

Higher prices are already being normalized, and it's not sustainable. Still, it's helpful to understand the rate of price change, as it varies a lot and tells us how much the can is being kicked down the road. Looking at multiple inflation metrics is a start which is what I do, but if you had the time, you would devise your own. Because you are right, the metrics were already so full of nonsense before this, what will happen now with Trump?

There are no levers to pull to magically change things, and the system is too complex, that's why very counterintuitive things happen. People were certain we were going to get hyperinflation or chaos or fundamental systemic breakdown after covid because the situation and stimulus (certain levers pulled) was truly absurd and unprecedented, but look where we are, there was a remarkable inertia and stability to the system that people did not expect, and many people still don't get today.

 

Edited Monday at 06:39 AM by WikiRando

[Hardkill]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Hardkill Xi and Putin are smart. Trump is a raging ignoramous.

Putin has a PhD in economics. Probably a fake one, but still.

True.

 

[mmKay]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@Joshe Yup.

It's like giving a manic and angry child a hammer in kindergarten and unleashing him on all the other kids.

 

[Husseinisdoingfine]

New perspective.

[Elliott]

Conservatives just increased tarrifs to 104%.

[Rafael Thundercat]

Sharing from a woman who follow this sitiation like a Hawk: 

Check section 6 of the White House Link. 

I warned about this but it bears repeating: 4/20 (Easter/Hitler’s bday) is 90 days from his 1/20 order.

Whether he invokes the Insurrection Act on that day remains to be seen (to justify Martial Law), but the report's due. With Hegseth & Noem in charge of it, the outcome's foregone.

He already used emergency powers to impose tariffs without Congress & invoke the Alien Enemies Act.

With mass protests planned for 4/19, this is a call to stay alert for a Reichstag Fire to trigger escalation.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declaring-a-national-emergency-at-the-southern-border-of-the-united-states

 

 

 

[DocWatts]

@Rafael Thundercat

Believe me, those of us who are participating in these protests are well aware that Trump is looking to manufacture an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act - Project 2025 clearly lays this out (with the upcoming deadline on Hitler's birthday, no less).

Declaring martial law is one thing, and actually enforcing it is another. The US contains 340 million people, while the US military has 1.3  million active service members across all branches. The national guard which would be tasked with actually carrying out these orders numbers around 400k.

The US military, when it was led by far more competent people, was barely able to keep a lid on Afghanistan - enforcing martial law across the US would be 1000 times more difficult. Moreover, Trump and Hegseth would be banking on the assumption that US service members are going to be okay with turning their weapons on crowds of peaceful protestors that contain moms and grandmas waving American flags.

The intent of invoking the Insurrection Act is much like that of ICE abducting people off the streets - it's to intimidate dissenters into obeying in advance. 

Of course, this all hinges on the protests remaining nonviolent and having positive optics with the American public. 5.2 million people poured into the streets on April 5, and I've yet to hear of a single instance of violence or property damage. Believe me, if there was anything that could be weaponized against us, Fox News be blasting it from a megaphone like they did with the BLM protests - the best they've been able to come up with so far is that we're supposedly 'paid protesters'.

Trump's regime is resorting to threats and intimidation because it's unpopular and weak.

Rule #1 of resisting authoritarianism is DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE.

Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.  - Timothy Snyder, On Liberty

Edited 21 hours ago by DocWatts

[WikiRando]

@Husseinisdoingfine That is indeed an interesting picture, and the perspective is new and appreciated. However, with some basic economic understanding, you can tell it's incredibly, egregiously misinformed. 
 

Refinancing the debt? That sounds weird to me but maybe I don't understand.

Deflation? They don't have the power to cause that.

Flight to treasury bonds? Treasury bonds are the source of the government debt!

I'm sorry but it is complete clownery.

Someone looked up some terms, mashed them together, and an unserious dude took it to make an entertainment video.

The fact that he has 2m followers sheds amazing light into the depth of ignorance and why Trump is in power.

Edited 19 hours ago by WikiRando
Corrections

[Frylock]

I'll take a moment to appreciate how accurate Leo's predictions were in his October 25th blog entry, and how most of this came to pass in not even 80 days of Trump being in office. I mean sure most of it was obvious to anyone who pays attention, but I didn't expect all of this to occur at such a rapid clip.

These are some of the things Leo had predicted in that blog post (with my comments in parenthesis):

Expect war (Not yet, but feels like it's coming soon)

violence (same as above)

abuse of power at unprecedented scale (yes)

loss of many freedoms (yes, getting there)

Federal ban on abortion (feels imminent)

white supremacy (yes)

Christian theocracy (yes)

criminals in the White House (yes)

fraud (yes)

corporate exploitation (yes)

gutting of all good regulations (yes)

a generation-long destruction of the Supreme Court (yes)

erosion of the legal system (yes)

concentration camps for migrants (yes)

abuse of all types of minorities (yes)

gross incompetence and mismanagement (yes)

poisoning of the food and water supply (yes)

pardoning of elite criminals (yes)

stock market collapse (yes)

crypto market collapse (yes)

and perhaps the end of democracy and elections (TBD but looking very likely)

[zazen]

The current Secretary of Commerce Scott Bessent shorted the pound with Soros back in the day - notoriously know as the man that broke the Bank of England.

https://alternativefundinsight.com/how-next-us-treasury-secretary-once-broke-the-bank-of-england/

This whole tariff saga seems to be a financial weapon to create a new order and re-alignment that favours the US - because they have a rising challenger within the old order they architected (Bretton Woods). They’re flipping the game board because someone else is winning at the game too well (China) and is challenging them (thucydides trap) and emboldening others (BRICS+)

Perhaps it’s not that they’re trying to win with tariffs, they’re trying to stop others winning too much. Tariffs are the vehicle, or brakes in this case, to halt a rising player in the game. The past had gunboat diplomacy, today we have tariffs.

I think it boils down to “contain and maintain”. Contain China, maintain hegemony.

They want to create a new order (Mar-a-lago accord) that favours the US, keeps “allies” checked and within their orbit, de-couples them from China and ideally isolates China.

In their view (not mine) the tariffs could potentially be milked in a few ways:

-  Uncertainty and capital flight to more certain assets like treasuries in order to reduce rates = re-finance debt at a lower rate that is maturing soon and have lower servicing cost for new spending to keep the empire ticking (€1 trillion budget just announced) 

- Inflict systemic financial pressure on China causing them to either need to bleed through reserves in order to prop up the Yuan, or stimulate the economy via liquidity. 

Once China is forced to choose between inflation or slowdown, speculators and big players come in to short whichever China can’t defend fast enough. Soros-Bessent style shorts like what happened to Bank of England.

- Blanket tariffs force all countries to the table (even allies) to pick a side and pledge allegiance with concessions in the form of: trade (buy our chlorinated chicken / LNG) and security (pay for your own or pay up for ours).

Tariffs are being used as a debt management tool, a geopolitical stress test, and a global loyalty filter.

The rhetoric around tariffs is populist, but the mechanics are imperial. It’s not about improving the lives of average citizens.

In short: the cost is passed to the consumer, already low margin businesses will have to fire workers or completely fold - ripe to be consolidated by bigger fish, furthering the inequality. The blanket tariff imposes a cost to their very own supply chains and inputs needed to manufacture in the first place. The needed machinery to re-industrialize comes from countries that are also tariffed (named Japan/Germany) I could go on..

 

Edited 17 hours ago by zazen

[Elliott]

Rand Paul: "The whole [tariffs] debate is so fundamentally backwards & upside down. It's based on a fallacy & the fallacy is this: that somehow in a trade, someone must lose. That somehow when you trade with someone, someone is taking advantage of you... I have a trade deficit with my grocery store"

[Leo Gura]

I have a trade deficit with my toilet.

[Elliott]

 

Thomas Sowell caught TDS. Probably get a sex change next week.

Edited 13 hours ago by Elliott