Live updates: Trump announces sweeping tariffs

Is he using a random number generator?

bamboozle them with bullshit
- Imma just post this video here: https://youtu.be/5RpPTRcz1no
  What the current administration is doing tracks with this video fairly accurately. Basically, "Network States" are what they want. It's basically what exists in Honduras right now in the form of "Prospera, which is a network state that operates in that country.
No, it's half the tariff those countries place on American goods. Or so he claims. I have no idea where those numbers come from.
- He doesn't understand what VAT is.
The following quote from ChrisO_wiki on bsky
"@chriso-wiki.bsky.social Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us." Just about sums it up.
- Damn, I'd like to see the data on that.
It's probably like his net worth, where "it goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings", "even my own feelings, as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day".
https://money.cnn.com/2011/04/21/news/companies/donald_trump/index.htm
Like he would even know what that is.
Apparently ChatGPT.

“our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, plundered”

by other nations selling their goods to us cheaply, and by them accepting our Dollars that cost us nothing to make for it!!

I don't think Trump understands the benefits and privileges for USA of having the top international reserve currency.
But maybe if he ruins it quick enough, he may find out?

Play stupid games and win stupid prices.

Play stupid games and win stupid prices.
He is playing Vlad Putin 8D Chess, not Donald Trump 1D Checkers. https://lemmy.world/post/27627662/16165977 This was all planned in 2013.
Introduction to the Kremlin media techniques of year 2014
Peter Pomerantsev September 9, 2014: Russia and the Menace of Unreality. How Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing information warfare
Adam Curtis, BBC, December 31, 2014: On The "Contradictory Vaudeville" Of Post-Modern Politics - "What this film is going to suggest is that that defeatist response has become a central part of a new system of political control. And to understand how this is happening, you have to look to Russia, to a man called Vladislav Surkov, who is a hero of our time. Surkov is one of President Putin's advisers, and has helped him maintain his power for 15 years, but he has done it in a very new way."
Book reading from December 5, 2014 on the subject by Peter Pomerantsev
- Own your president Trump. Even if your theory was true, and I won't qualify it, nothing of this could have been possible without a ruined education system and mindless propaganda. All of this starts way before 2013.
One of my main rules of life is that people are most suspicious of the behavior they are most likely to perform. Cheaters think they're being cheated on, thieves think everybody is stealing from them. If HitlerPig thinks everyone else is looting, pillaging, raping, and plundering, its because that what he does.
Buying from other economies does two things. One, you have access to their expertise/efficiency.
Not everyone will have invested in the same industry.
Will miss out on cheap labour. Cheap resources.
Don't be dumb though, selling us USD for our products isn't just "printing paper". We use those USD (mostly we sell the debt to china) to buy USA companies. It's capitalism after all.
...
I literally just corrected someone else about the opposite mistake.
"prizes"*

A lot of people’s lives are about to get more expensive… again.

Is this winning?

China and Vietnam are producing a lot of the low cost every day items people use. It's going to hit the lower income people the hardest. Thank goodness I'm in Canada.
- Timu: shop like a billionaire because only billionaires can afford the cheap Chinese garbage.
- Shit might hit the fan harder and faster in USA, but don't be fooled: Canada and every other country in the world will be gravely affected: less trade, prices inflate, some goods become hard to find at all at any price, etc. US $ after all is the big reserve currency and all international trade was de facto protected by US military hegemony. Probably countries like North Korea or Iran will see least influence from all this.. It's insane to watch this happening. Their main goal really just seems to be to create chaos. And from chaos... rises whatever authoritarian state they want to create after declaring some state of emergency shit and after the superwealthy gobbled up all the failing companies at bargain prices. It's like they're organising a reenactment of the "shock therapy" that crashed the Russian economy on a speedrun after the soviet union fell apart.
Mainly American people's lives. He's basically making everything more expensive in USA that is not made in USA, but most things made in USA are dependent on imported parts, fertilizers, components, raw materials etc... This is going to be a mess to witness
You're going to get tired of ~~winning~~ tariffs.
It’s winning for magats because they wanted to hurt people
The trump regime was designed to TANK the US economy so that stocks, businesses, and industries can be bought by billionaires at rock bottom prices.
All is going according to plan.
- um, yeah. we heard you the first 5 times, why do you keep reposting the same comment over and over?

I mean, this will suck in rhe short term, but these companies will exit the U.S. market if it gets to be uneconomical, and we'll be fucked, not them. Trump's I Am sO sMaRt comments all the time will make him look like an even bigger idiot than he already does.

If we actually want manufacturing in the U.S., give companies incentives to do business here. This is the opposite of incentives.

What is looking like more of an idiot than he already does going to accomplish? He's the most idiotic politician in living memory, by far, and there are some absolutely colossal morons on that list. The people who haven't figured that out are never going to. They will be praising him until the day they die.
- Never underestimate the destruction that stupid people in position of power can do.
- What is looking like more of an idiot than he already does going to accomplish? He’s the most idiotic politician in living memory, by far, and there are some absolutely colossal morons on that list.
  He is a Reality TV star. People can not resist mocking Donald Trump. Mocking isn't resisting, mockery is all part of the Kremlin media techniques. The more idiotic he and Elin Musk behaves, the more people rush to their social machines and LOL. People can not resist his orange skin color, it makes skin color a constant topic (brown, black, white, orange, etc).
  Introduction to the Kremlin media techniques of year 2014
  Peter Pomerantsev September 9, 2014: Russia and the Menace of Unreality. How Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing information warfare
  Adam Curtis, BBC, December 31, 2014: On The "Contradictory Vaudeville" Of Post-Modern Politics - "What this film is going to suggest is that that defeatist response has become a central part of a new system of political control. And to understand how this is happening, you have to look to Russia, to a man called Vladislav Surkov, who is a hero of our time. Surkov is one of President Putin's advisers, and has helped him maintain his power for 15 years, but he has done it in a very new way."
  Book reading from December 5, 2014 on the subject by Peter Pomerantsev
It isn't quite that easy.
The US is a MASSIVE part of basically every luxury industry and isn't insignificant in many others. So while alternate trading partners can be found to handle stuff like lumber, plenty of industries are going to be hit real hard and not have alternative customers. And they aren't going to just want to lower their profits for national pride.
But yeah. I REALLY hope trump is just actively destroying the US either in the name of putin or just out of anger and spite over not winning in 2020. Because the alternative is that we are all going to suffer so fucking much because that piece of shit doesn't understand what tariffs are.
- Luxury goods are not really hit by tariffs nor taxes the same way more basic goods might be. A $ 4000 bag that goes to $ 4 500 is way more manageable for the kind of people who want to and can buy it (it may even make it more desirable for those who want and can't buy it).
- I REALLY hope trump is just actively destroying the US either in the name of putin
  People won't discuss that this was all planned in a November 2013 Moscow meeting and announced one month later in December 2013... shortly before the February 2014 Ukraine invasion. https://lemmy.world/post/27627662/16165977
The effects of widespread tariffs is well known.
You will lose industry that makes high added-value products, and increase the production of products with low added-value. (Most people call this "deindustrialization".)
Tariffs mostly don't impact the overall trade balance, so there's no reason to expect that one to change.
- Except, for example many Canadians, who are really fed up with being the kick ball for American Presidents (Trump has a lot of company when it comes to tariffs), who will do their best to not buy anything from the USA. I predict our trade deficit will go in the opposite direction that Trump hopes. The USA still needs to buy electricity, gas/oil, wood, and various other raw products from Canada. We don't have to buy finished goods from the USA since there are plenty of other countries to supply them. We really don't need to vacation there.
- And since we haven't moved the needle on the minimum wage in decades, people will be making those low-added value products at starvation wages.
The glue eating rageaholic is doing the opposite of this. He's going to tarrif farming EXPORTS from the US.
Never in our history has america had such a stupid president.
- Wait, what?
If we actually want manufacturing in the U.S., give companies incentives to do business here
Like the CHIPS act? The EV and related items? Infrastructure? High speed rail (most of which has a made in us requirement)? What happened to those again?
- The current administration is trying to pull the funding back even tho its been appropriated by congress. Funny how congress isn't doing anything about it.
The trump regime was designed to TANK the US economy so that stocks, businesses, and industries can be bought by billionaires at rock bottom prices.
All is going according to plan.

Conveniently left Russia out. I wonder why.

Russia and North Korea.
It's official. We are the baddies now.
- ... Now?
- If we can't buy anythibg from North Korea, what would be tariffed?
- Just stopped pretending to be good.
- I am not.
They are rest of the World. How dissrespectfull.
I think you're reading too much into that.
They're either under "Rest of world" like the EU, or the US doesn't import anything from it, which as it's under sanctions, it shouldn't - nor export to.
- UK is also 10% like the rest of world. Why was it mentioned seperately? It's not like Russia is a small country.
- Read it some more, Russia is 10%. Half of EU
- Like the EU?

Ironically crashing the economy is one of the best things you can do to slow down climate change

Trump will be remembered as the most influential US President.
- Imagine people in 2150 praising the visionary and benevolent president Trump who courageously lead our world to the only possible path in order to save the environment: "He fooled them all with his "drill baby drill" and they fell for it, they elected him. Of course some were suspicious that something was off, but he had a grand plan for nature to finally be restored..."
  I would love to read this fiction, because reality is quite sad at the moment.
- Absolutely, just like Hitler was the most influential German leader ever
- Sort of like Sulla or Caesar, but without the talent?
- Time's person of the year 2025 already sigh
Wrong.
The best things you can do are invest in green energy and energy storage projects, create polices that cap (and actually punish) carbon emissions, upgrade to more efficient infrastructure... All things that take money, a functional government and a functional economy.
What we learned from COVID, is that crashing the economy does not really slow down climate change, it just hits the pause button for a little bit, and then it resumes at the same or greater speed.
- pause buttons is all its about. emissions wont stop after energy generation is zero-emission. it just will be slower by a chunk (like 60%ish)
  people will still breed cows/not turn vegan (up to 75% of total 20%ghg emissions) and mobility will also remain (lets just say by half without derailing too much - so half of total 20%ghg emissions)
  Also theres studies on how we are kinda jet lagging in resulted heating and on how recordings of right before pre-industrial era levels also could be different, lower in total and therefore more extreme heating affecting tipping points.
  so a pause like that would be great - because all we have left is time and smart people (although kinda marginalized nowadays and I dont really believe in the success of that in short term) we have crossed 1,5° and therefore are in tipping point cascade (which is irreversable) territory.
- Not wrong. But I will point out that this will funnel a lot more money to China, which has been investing much more heavily in greentech than the US has. So overall it could actually be a plus - for climate change at least.
- Just a silly joke of course. Gallows humor. In order to combat climate change you'd have to re-design how we live and work and our economic system and reset existing wealth inequalities, re-design and rebuild thousands of industrial processes, and change multiple systems that are in place. For example you'd at least have to:
  Ban advertising to reduce desire/demand for consumption
  Ban patents (at least in the current form) so industrial processes can be re-designed and rebuild without roadblocks
  Nationalize news and social media and turn them into a cooperative under the control of the workers there
  Invest into R&D for circular economy and development and regulation for long lasting appliances and goods that last decades with repair and maintenance
  Basically what we learned is that it's practically impossible for humanity as a global civilization to stop climate change. Most people can't even bear to think about the steps it would take.
  Of course, developing the technology for a sustainable circular economy for the basic needs (food, energy, education, building shelters, communication etc) is still worthwhile.
Sure, but he is just crashing Western economy as Russia is preparing to invade rest of Europe.

isn't this just going to fuck up the US economy rather than meaningfully affect any other country? you don't fucking produce anything worth a shit anymore.

Trump has no idea how the economy works, his wealth is propped up by Russian oligarchs laundering money through his assets.
This move is almost certainly being directed to him through foreign agents the traitor has as advisors (though they consider themselves handlers) on behalf of Putin and other regimes hostile to the US who back door'd their way into the situation through his greed and lack of morality.
- Also intentionally crashing the economy to hurt political enemies and cause civil unrest (mass government firings = lots of educated qualified people out of work, also drives down wages of other educated qualified people). Techo-fascist corporate cities and Gilead don’t need a Dow Jones index.
It will have an effect on other countries, but fuck up the US economy the worst. Other countries have the benefit of having 190+ other countries to do trade with. Over the next few years, they will increasingly go for alternatives to whatever they've previously traded with the US. Thanks to the stable genius, the US will permanently be left poorer, while other countries will soon have economic growth again.
- Just like how a rising tide raises all boats, a sinking ship takes everyone down with it. The billionaires think being on the life rafts will make them more wealthy compared to those that are sinking.
He is gambling on the fact that Us economy can hold off longer than other countries and they’ll cave
It’s like two people holding their breath bad for both but neither wants to lose
- Cave about what though?
Most of the kit that is made in US uses parts distributed by other countries... So even domestic sales of US created products are likely to be impacted. Gotta give it to Krasnov, he's doing a bloody good job at the task he's been set.
- Could you imagine if Biden declared what essentially amounts to a 10% sales tax?
Oh no. We produce stuff. The best weapons for killing people are made here.

And just like that every American good costs significantly more.

If your family income is less than about $200,000, congratulations, your tax rate has at least doubled.

How much do I have to make before my tax bill goes down?
- Last I saw, it was 360k.

In case anyones looking at this and asking question like "Why has Cambodia been dunked with 49% when they're clearly not a competitor to the US" or "Why is Trump claiming that the European Union has a 40% tariff on the US when the actual mean tariff on US goods into the EU is less than 5%", here's your answer to how these figures have been calculated.

Take the US trade deficit with a given country (eg. China is $292bn)
Take the total good imported by US (for China that's $439bn)
Divide the first figure by the second! Why? Who knows! It's a number! Less talk more first grade arithmetic (if you're still following that gives us 67%)
That gives us a random number which we'll pretend is that country's tariff of US goods even though it's completely unrelated in every way. We'll divide it by two to get the new tariff rate for imports from that country. Why? Honestly if you're still expecting there to be an answer to that question I'm wondering if you've been following. (that gives us 34%, well actually it gives us 33.5% but I'm not sure the Trump administration understands the idea of fractions so we'll just round it up from there)

The "reason" behind this is that Trump seems to think trade deficits are really bad, which is bad news for the US because it's had a trade deficit for the last 50 years. We'll ignore the fact that based on GDP it's been the wealthiest country in the world for that time though.

Anyway, just to give everyone an idea of how completely, utterly unrelated to anything meaningful that figure is, let's take Cambodia. The country is very poor compared to the US so can't afford to buy anything that the US manufacters (Cambodians aren't driving round in Teslas or IMessaging each other). Some US companies use it for clothing manufacture because labour is cheap in Cambodia (see the previous bit about Cambodia being much poorer than the US). This means that Cambodia imports close to nothing from the US compared to what it exports, giving it a close to 100% trade deficit, so we wind up with a 49% tariff on Cambodia.

I genuinely don't understand the mindset that looks at the US's explotation of cheap labour in Cambodia and interprets the US as the victim in that relationship, but hey-ho maybe I'm just not biggly-smart enough to understand the 4d chess moves at play here. . .

Reference (because unfortunately none of what I said was made up and that geniunely is the calculation): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trumps-idiotic-and-flawed-tariff-calculations-stun-economists

Edit: After making fun of Trump for not understanding the enconomy, I went and conflated per capita GDP with GDP. Doh! Now corrected.

Why the fuck is our media so bad that they blindly accept Trump's bullshit line that the tariffs are "reciprocal"? Are they just stupid or have they been paid off? Do they not know the meaning of "reciprocal" or are they just too fucking lazy to question the White House's rhetoric even a little bit?

The state of the United States makes me sick. We're being robbed blind by the oligarchy in broad daylight while the media gleefully amplifies the administrations lies.

FYI , HERE is the most up to date list (including Turkiye, Israel and some others)
Most headlines I see are going with 10%, which is a big understatement.
It’s because they’re run by billionaires. Even liberal, big outlets harp on cultural issues to redirect focus.
Are they just stupid or have they been paid off?
Neither one. they are in a cult. Donald Trump is entertaining / clickbait / meme leadership. The novelty of having a 78 year old man shit-talk on an Apple iPhone they can't resist. They have brain damage from it all.
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985 !BackTo1985@lemm.ee

Boycott the USA. Do not consume American products. Do not travel to the US. Cancel your subscriptions, find alternatives or pirate their software and media. Make Americans tourists feel unwelcome.

I'm an American, and I endorse this message.
- Same. Got chickens, veg seeds, and I'm about to buy a bow for hunting my own meat. Fuck the US, time to crack out that survivalism I've been practicing.
Make America go away!
But like, could I come visit if I need to seek asylum? That would be different than tourism, right? I'm not really happy or comfortable with the situation here, nor have my efforts been able to change other people's views (e.g. make them think about consequences).
- Ok to be fair… You may come as long as you’re a queer / trans baddie or if your name is Luigi, or take the “death to America” pledge. 😌
- Immigrants are welcome, tourists as well.
I'm doing my part! More to strengthen the EU, than to weaken the US, but: Cancelled all US tech subscriptions (not a small deal as a software dev). Cloud services all moved to Scaleway in France, AI migrated to Mistral, mail to Tuta, maps to Mapy.cz and more...
I get where you're coming from, but the whole tourist thing . . . remember half of us fucking despise Trump and his merry band of fascist fuckwits.
Not sure about that part.

They'll be reverted as soon as he gets some flattery and palm greasing from the right people.

That’s all this was about anyway
And we'll know exactly which countries bought him off

So is the plan to drive the cost of everyday essentials so high that virtually everyone bankrupts and the billionaires buy all of our assets for pennies on the thousand dollars? That is all I can come up with trying to make a scenario where this has some coherent objective.

He wants to use tariffs (which act like a flat-tax) to lower income tax on the rich. There's speculation he's also doing something like the "Mar-a-Lago Accord," which involves devaluing the dollar (causing inflation). If wages don't rise with the inflation (which they don't want), US labor will be more competitive, so people can work in factory jobs with pay analogous to current Chinese factory workers.
- Project 2025 says he wants to have tariffs removed against the US. Assuming he's really following it.
A poor America, with no friends in the world suits Vlad Pootang very well. It will be like the world has 2 Russia's....
Some of the architects who helped win the second American civil war say yes:
Firstly, it is essential to squash the democratic myth that a state ‘belongs’ to the citizenry. The point of neo-cameralism is to buy out the real stakeholders in sovereign power, not to perpetuate sentimental lies about mass enfranchisement. Unless ownership of the state is formally transferred into the hands of its actual rulers, the neo-cameral transition will simply not take place, power will remain in the shadows, and the democratic farce will continue.
So, secondly, the ruling class must be plausibly identified. It should be noted immediately, in contradistinction to Marxist principles of social analysis, that this is not the ‘capitalist bourgeoisie’. Logically, it cannot be. The power of the business class is already clearly formalized, in monetary terms, so the identification of capital with political power is perfectly redundant. It is necessary to ask, rather, who do capitalists pay for political favors, how much these favors are potentially worth, and how the authority to grant them is distributed. This requires, with a minimum of moral irritation, that the entire social landscape of political bribery (‘lobbying’) is exactly mapped, and the administrative, legislative, judicial, media, and academic privileges accessed by such bribes are converted into fungible shares. Insofar as voters are worth bribing, there is no need to entirely exclude them from this calculation, although their portion of sovereignty will be estimated with appropriate derision. The conclusion of this exercise is the mapping of a ruling entity that is the truly dominant instance of the democratic polity. Moldbug calls it the Cathedral.
The formalization of political powers, thirdly, allows for the possibility of effective government. Once the universe of democratic corruption is converted into a (freely transferable) shareholding in gov-corp. the owners of the state can initiate rational corporate governance, beginning with the appointment of a CEO. As with any business, the interests of the state are now precisely formalized as the maximization of long-term shareholder value. There is no longer any need for residents (clients) to take any interest in politics whatsoever. In fact, to do so would be to exhibit semi-criminal proclivities. If gov-corp doesn’t deliver acceptable value for its taxes (sovereign rent), they can notify its customer service function, and if necessary take their custom elsewhere. Gov-corp would concentrate upon running an efficient, attractive, vital, clean, and secure country, of a kind that is able to draw customers. No voice, free exit.
- The architects of clowndom. Seriously reading this stuff makes me feel like I am losing brain cells at a rapid rate.
The trump regime was designed to TANK the US economy so that stocks, businesses, and industries can be bought by billionaires at rock bottom prices.
All is going according to plan.
Yup.

I'd love to open the news one evening and not feel like we're another step closer to the apocalypse.

Honestly, fuck Trump. Where my Luigis at?

He was inside you all along
- You can't get close to orange fuck for anything like that. You gotta hope for a natural luigi to show up and say "time's up bitch"
He missed.

Trump: Meta will invest $500 billion.

Truth: Meta will invest around $60 billion.

Thats a gross mis representation of what’s factually correct in monetary terms.

This fucking asshat is going to sink the American economy. No major company is going to do this. Why would TSMC spend “$500 billion” to build a factory?

Them just paying the tariff would be less than building a new factory. They just need to survive trumps term and frankly, when the U.S. can’t get chips at an affordable price from Taiwan, those tariffs will fall away like a pillar f sand during high tide.

Absolutely dumbest fucking turd on the planet.

Americans will be paying the tariffs, not foreign companies.
- Well they'll also be paying it in reduced revenue lmao everyone loses
- I think he was just making a point about how outsized the price of the factory was. Like even if they had to pay the tariffs, it wouldn't be worth it to build a factory, so it's double stupid of Trump to do this.
I wish TSMC would open a factory in Europe.
Not only would it be very advantageous for the EU, it would sting like hell for the US.
- They are already building one in Dresden, others are planned to follow. The CHIPS act is at last having an effect.

Never mind the money. Think about this: Is the American lifestyle self-sustainable?

No? Why not?

Because they use more than they produce? Yes, and where do those things come from?

Imports? Yes.

Trump litteraly put a stop to the American lifestyle.

Yep. In the next few years I expect more Americans to raise pigs on their suburban plots.

Did you happen to notice the one country not on the list?

Here I’ll give you a hint it’s name starts with an “R” and is run by a man who’s name starts with a “P” and is currently at war with a country that starts with a “U”…

Wait what?
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda declared war on Uganda?
_/s
- Nice
- I knew I’d get the ol’ switch-a-roo comments. Please enjoy one internet point sir.
- 😒 , at least like put any effort forth if you're going to steal a joke and make it shittier.
Well technically R would fall under the category "rest of the world", no?
Doesn't the US already have full sanctions with Russia? So literally no trade is happening with them, so a tarrif would be pointless? Maybe I missed trump removing the sanctions at some point in his onslaught of nonsense.
- Trade IS happening with Russia. Only specific companies and industries are sanctioned, everything else is business as usual.
- Penguins trade with the US?
I'm so sick of the bullshit misinformation that gets upvoted on this site. First, you demand tariffs on what equals to roughly 0.8% of our total imports. Second, there is no "war" currently going on between "R" and "U". Also, I thought the "P" man ended the genocide against "R" citizens by taking power, I'm not a scholar though so link away with whatever truth burger you're trying to peddle.
- I see we have a dirty tankie in our midst.

This is kind of hilarious in a dumb way. It's going to hit american consumers like a goddamn hammer, and will be rewarded with tariffs going the other way, and we'll all be poorer. Americans most of all.

If he keeps going like this you'll end up with stagflation - high inflation and a stagnating or recessive economy. That shit is hard to get out of, good luck.

With a balooning debt to gdp ratio, its gonna get unmanagable really fast , people are too stupid to elect another FDR and US' tech dominance gap will shrink or be outright gone.
Chinese millenia is coming if its not already here
- Honestly, at this point, I think it's time to just call it a day on the very idea of the US as a single unified nation. The Constitution has been demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to be utterly incapable of actually doing its job. It's a 200+ year old document written in a different age, by people who didn't have hundreds of examples of modern democracies to draw upon. It was a good attempt, but it's horribly obsolete at this point. And our institutions are equally not up to the task. And it was written by 13 states who each joined willingly. If you gave each state a chance to join the current US today, how many would actually do it?
  We need to peacefully dissolve the whole thing. Dissolve the federal government; grant every state full independence. The states can then come together into whatever number of new nations they wish to form.
  This clearly isn't working. Half the country has completely given up on the Constitution, and the other half thinks institutions and laws alone will magically fix the problem. We've crossed the Rubicon. Once a president is allowed to get away with this level of flagrant law breaking, once the courts have become this corrupted, once the system has become so sclerotic and fundamentally incapable of meeting the needs of the people? It's time to call it quits. There's no repairing a system like this. Even if free and fair elections happen, electing a Democrat in 2028 will not fix this problem. At best, we'll get 4 more years of useless waffling, and then another fascist will get elected in 2032.
  The US is a couple that has reached an impasse of irreconcilable differences. The US had a good run, but at this point it's time to admit that it's run its course, and it is time to move on.
  The US isn't even really a nation; it's more of an empire. There are vast regional differences in the country. The cultures and desired governments of the people in the different regions vary substantially. But because we're all locked together in this bloated dying husk of an empire, nobody is happy. There's a reason the oldest countries in the world tend to be smaller ones. Empires are held together by force, not by common culture and shared values. They tend to collapse under their own weight and contradictions eventually. And the US is no exception.
  And we shouldn't mourn this. The US had a good run. It did some cool things and made some real advancements on the human story. But governments exist ultimately to serve the people. Can anyone really say with a straight face that the people of the US wouldn't be better served by breaking the US into a series of smaller, more manageable nations that better reflect the will of their people? Would all the nations that border the Mediterranean really be better off if they were still united in the Roman Empire? Would all of Latin America outside of Brazil be better off if it was all still New Spain? Would the people of Asia be happier if they were still united in some post-Mongol empire? I don't think so.
  Sometimes you just need to let things die. It's time to put the United States out of its misery. We can do better.

I think it's important to note that this will kill a great many small businesses.

Larger companies have a larger supply in giant warehouses. Small businesses order smaller quantities more often. They get fucked sooner with the costs going up. If a customer wants to support that small business they sometimes would have to pay twice what they could get it for from a larger company. This is a deep consolidation of wealth.

The trump regime was designed to TANK the US economy so that stocks, businesses, and industries can be bought by billionaires at rock bottom prices.
All is going according to plan.
- When it's not working, it's working.

In 2020, I thought Covid might crash the economy. You know, history repeats itself. But oh, was I wrong; it'll all be caused by a single fuckwit which deserves to be tortured.

Fuck anyone involved in making the world a worse place. I hope they all die in fucking agony.

The crash in 2020 was twice as deep as it should have been. The markets were spooked by a president repeating conspiracy theories instead of reassuring people while health organizations were scrambling and panicking.
Together, we can make that happen

The trump regime was designed to TANK the US economy so that stocks, businesses, and industries can be bought by billionaires at rock bottom prices.

All is going according to plan.

I'm all for "it's benefitting the billionaires," and that's what tariffs do, but most of the ultra-wealthy's money is tied up in the market, too. It's more that this is a regressive tax to fund cuts to progressive taxes, fucking shit up is not the intent.
Some of the administration's actions really are them drinking their own Kool-aid. Like, what they've done to the HHS is objectively detrimental to the ultra-wealthy old guys too. There's some arguments to be had around tariffs, but implementing them Iike this is more on the kool-aid side.
- but most of the ultra-wealthy’s money is tied up in the market, too.
  The ultra-wealthy have enough of a buffer to buy out all the middling-wealthy when they go bankrupt. They can buy the dip without themselves going bankrupt.
- wealthy people are not a monolith. some, those with advance warning (insider advantage) will benefit while others lose out. this is not just about rich vs poor, it's also ultra rich vs ultra rich, cabals of powerful elites vying for control of global markets in the chaotic aftermath of global financial restructuring.
in addition to buy low, sell high... perhaps even more lucrative, the crash will be used as an excuse for another massive corporate bailout benefiting the wealthiest business owners and will accelerate the transfer of wealth from govt (taxpayers/poors) to private interests (oligarchs and bankers). this happened in 2008, during Covid PPP, and it will happen again.
If it crashes badly enough their money will be worthless.

GlObAL ReCESSioN

Can they fucking stop threatening us like we’re stupid children? Life has been getting more expensive worldwide for a decade and we all know now who is to blame.

I don’t fucking care about new toyota prices in the us, I want to buy potatoes in poland. Fuck off with your recessions and bullshit economies.

Can they fucking stop threatening us like we’re stupid children? Too be fair.. The majority of those who voted are clearly stupid (not as stupid as a child though, a rock would be a better description) . So it's fair game of them to make use of that statistic.
and we all know now who is to blame.
Central banks?

Cambodia and Vietnam are so fucked. All the Chinese companies shifting production to Vietnam and Cambodia are fucked. Damn. These are very high tariffs.

Most of all, the US is fucked.

Thanks for typing out the percentages, so far I've only seen emotional news reports about it without any detailed info.

Are these tariffs on ALL goods from a certain country? Eg, does 34% on China mean 34% on ALL Chinese goods or just certain ones like cars?

Well, one of two things will happen now.

The US economy will recede by roughly 30% over the coming years (classified by economists as "catastrophic collapse")
It will turn out that trade was "fake and gay" all along and autarky is the way to go, despite centuries of historic lessons to the contrary.

Take your pick.

It's all goods from those countries.
30% seems pretty generous. Nevermind the complete collapse of trade and alliances we built over the past century, won't countries stop using the us dollar as the backing reserve? Which will likely set america on an even further downward trend, especially since the dollar isn't on the gold standard anymore?
- won’t countries stop using the us dollar as the backing reserve
  Yeah. Putin's gonna be so pleased.
- I hope Euro takes over
american juche now!

I don't have a ton of "the court is wrong" opinions, but Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution flatly gives Congress the responsibility of regulating trade and imposing tariffs. The President just doesn't (shouldn't) have the authority to change rates. The executive needs to execute the will of the Legislative branch.

Congress is pretty much dead. Repubs have lost whatever was the last vertebrae they had in their spine
- The default if Congress can't pass legislation should be that legislation doesn't happen.

US dollar in absolute freefall. Thursday is going to be a bloodbath when the market opens.

It's 8D chess. By crashing the economy and the dollar he can then increase the price of gold and liquidate Ft Knox at the perfect time. Then he can replace the dollar with trumpcoin. Truly a genius and a patriot.
Is /s needed?
1.084USD per EUR yesterday moved to 1.097USD per EUR today.
- As of now at 17:00 Rome time: 0.90 USD / 1.00 EUR. That is a really big drop

Pls 100% world wide tax.

I like to go straight to the "Find Out" phase.

👀

(Remember, when the great depression happens, its our duty to eliminate nazis)

With Nazis, it's always the right time.
There's technically no upper limit, why not make it 10000% and really see what happens!

This gold from wallstreetbets:

Soooo is the tariffs charged to the United States really a ratio of the trade imbalance?? For example Vietnam imported roughly 14.6 billion in goods from the United States, and we imported around 146 billion, so thus they have decided tariffs are 90% to the United States…thus we are putting a tariff on them of half of that…which means we are literally tariffing the goods we either a)need more or b) get more efficiently at a higher rate? That may be the absolute dumbest way to create a tariff policy I could imagine if that is the case…which it looks to be.

https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1jpzhje/tariff_chart_released/ml476s7/

People are saying if you ask ChatGPT the easiest way to do a global tariff based on trade deficits with a minimum of 10 percent - it spits out the exact same numbers.
- The Oracle!! 👁️👄👁️
  Haha, glancing through some of the novels (I'd hate to call some of them non fiction) these folks read, well you get how surface level a lot of this stuff is. It's morbidly funny. This is a stupid timeline.
- unable to reproduce this, sorry

Me, checking what the damage is: oh good, my European defence stocks went up 2 to 4 percent today while the American stocks are tanking, happy days!

Me, after thinking on it a bit longer: oh God, my European defence stocks went up while the world economy is taking a hit, better get ready for whatever's coming

How to isolate your country:

Fuck Cambodia specifically. Trump probably got a bad VD from there at some point.

The horrible cruelty regarding Cambodia is that the reason they have such a high trade deficit is that most Cambodians are too poor to be able to begin to afford anything that America has to offer.
It's one of the poorest countries in Asia, they could cut their tariffs to 0% and the net effect would be less than the measurable rounding error on total American exports.
Trump is going to tank the economy of an already poverty-stricken country and plunge it into exactly the kind of instability that destroyed it once already just because "fuck you, give me more".
- The horrible cruelty regarding Cambodia you say?
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1cbTKX4Lzo&list=PLf03ejEKGKxyGu4G3QCLWhXefQvgG1EEH
  If anyone wants to learn more about America's actions in Cambodia, check out Blowback.
Probably got a surprise when he went to grab a ladyboy by the pussy.

Whelp, guess I'm joining the Boycott US movement

Edit:

Swapped Google for Ecosia

Brave for Librefox (also swapped Firefox Nightly for Iceraven on mobile)

Swapped Uber for Bolt/Uber Eats for Just Eats

Everyone should be boycotting the US, especially those inside of the US.
- For people inside the US doesnt paying for the tarriffs just means more money going into this administration? Better to only purchase things if you absolutely have to

Stop calling them reciprocal.

Been browsing the conservative subreddit this morning just to see what they all are thinking. There is a surprising number of "This is a terrible idea" comments but its also funny seeing a whole bunch of republicans who now suddenly like higher taxes, inflation and stock crashes.

Did he wait until late afternoon Apr 2nd?

He failed to do it "the day l'm elected."

He failed to do it the day he was sworn in.

He failed to do it, like 5 times from Jan - Mar.

He failed to do it Apr 1.

He failed to do business during business hours Apr 2nd.

This little baby just keeps failing and hiding.

But....he's still racist right? Because that's all I care about. Making sure it's still okay to be racist.

Smells like Smoot-Hawley up in this bitch.

Sick history reference.
anyone? anyone?
- The act and tariffs imposed by U.S.'s trading partners in retaliation [for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act] were major factors in the reduction of American exports and imports by 67% during the Great Depression.
Rolling back the odometer to the 1930s.

Tarrifs are a Trump Tax on ordinary Americans so they can give tax breaks to billionaires.

Bingo.
It’s true in many roundabout ways, but the math adds up to “break for billionaires.”
Like, it’s full of nepotism and revenge, too. The Taiwan tax sucks. And take the discrete tax on automobiles and auto parts: I'll give you one guess on who that benefits.
Maybe Americans should consider not paying taxes in the first place.

Bro just crashed the market with a printed out excel sheet.

The guy is really playing economic Russian roulette. This can consequently go terrible wrong for the US.

Like playing ruzzian roulette with a full clip.
He doesn't care. He's rich and he's old. He just wants to grift his last few years away. He'll be shielded from the worst of the impacts.

Putin's bitch trying to further destabilize the world for daddy.

As a 🇨🇦 my boycott will last a lifetime.

One of the benefits of having young children is that if I play my cards right "my" boycott could exceed my own lifetime.

I don't know what the actual reasoning is but the 49/46% on Cambodia and Vietnam sounds an awful lot like how we still embargo Cuba like decades after failing to overthrow Castro.

Reminder that after setting the political stage for the Khmer Rouge to take power with the carpet-bombing of Cambodia, the US Government continued to recognize Pol Pot as its rightful ruler all the way through to the early 1990s, simply because the actual Cambodian government of the 80s was installed with Vietnam's help.
The USA seems to be on an never-ending quest to fuck Indochina over for no fucking reason.
Lots of good cheap building materials and cloth come from Vietnam. Trump publically thinks that by cutting off these it will bring the rust belt back. Absolute lunacy.
The number for a tariff is a trading deficit divided by total export of a country. It's simplistically stupid.

Cambodia be like

Breast milk prices are going to skyrocket.

Trump clearly has some feelings about Vietnam. He used his “bone spurs” excuse to avoid being sent over there back in the day. Lmao

What a pussy

Lol, the bitch waited till the markets closed to announce it.

I’m not sure that’s any better, as traders and news have a whole night to digest it now. It might’ve seemed less bad with just an hour (before the next controversy consumes the cycle).

This is going to be a bloody mess to witness from the outside. The US are shooting their own foot again and again with a bazooka and it is going to hurt the majority of its population

Surprised I don't see Brasil (sp?) on there not surprised I don't see Hungary Turkiye Russia or Israel on there.

Rest of the world is 10%. I assume that's what they'll see.
- At least Brazil has tariffs large than that already. I doubt he will decrease them.
It was 10% as they have a 10% on the US.
In English, Brazil.

90% income tax over a certain amount. This was how they did it in the 50s….you know the days republicans keep citing as the “good ol days”

"The corporations own the government" made sense for a while, but Trump has done enough to hurt said corporations lately that I'm actually starting to question that idea (it's definitely true for the majority of Democrats though). The only real reason I can think of where it would make sense to do stuff like this is to cause a crisis making it easier to abuse power later on.

The corporations thought they own the government. They bought Trump into the White House. They should have known that he is mad.
- The owners of the corporations own the govt. They are loyal to no company and no country. They can take their money anywhere, but so long as they are in the us they would prefer that the tax burden be shifted onto the people and off of them, with as few restrictions as possible on their own behavior.
  The owners are still quite happy with trump. It's all of the littler con voters who are hopefully now reconsidering their vote.
- Nope they should have realised that even though they "own" this government, the president is communicating with a foreign server they don't own.
The only real reason I can think of
It's mercantillism, a well studied subject.
- Maybe, but threatening your customers who are buying your exported goods doesn't seem like a good strategy, and US-based corporations already dominate in the US, so it's not like they're helping the US become more powerful unless they're preparing for WW3.
- Domestically, this is what will happen, but those corporations are also multinationals and get a large amount of money from doing business outside the US. What Trump is doing with the sort of threats he's making to US allies is causing their reputation to plummet abroad along with their revenue. This can only go so far before competitors from EU and China take their spot and they lose all international relevance. Additionally, the tariffs will put them at a disadvantage in the global market compared to corporations outside the US which is further contributing to their loss in revenue. So if Trump's main interest was in helping those corporations, I doubt he would be doing this.
It's not the corporations, it's the billionaires that run them. Every time Trump does something that makes the stock market drop, they get richer by scooping up more for less. Than sell them when Trump says "Just kidding" and the stock market rises again.
Not to mention that all of their companies get to raise prices and blame "tariffs" in order to increase their profit margin.
It's the entire reason they paid to get him into the white house.

Well well well, we finally fell off the cliff, didn't we?

Starting a trade war with the entire world, easy to win, right?

If the entire world reciprocates, which they will, you will literally wish you had just a recession to worry about. I wonder how Trump's approval ratings will be about a month from now

Trump doesn't care about approval ratings. He has a "golden parachute" waiting for him and his buddies in Russia after he destroys America.
- I was gonna say until his usefulness ends and he mysteriously falls out of a 4th floor window, but he's too fat and heavy to fall through one, so maybe just some plutonium in his diet coke
Jim Jones was able to walk 600 adults to their death (the children, sadly, had no say in the matter). It's a cult

And our swiss right-wing populists thought Trump was better for the economy. 31% down their stupid throats

Russian asset undermining American interests and alliances. Can't imagine why.

Just saw a news item here in the Netherlands about a bourbon distillery in the US and the owner said that in the long term the tariffs will be good for his business. LOL these magats are delusional. I fucking hope he and his ilk become destitute. Sorry not sorry.

China: 34%

Added note that this is cumulative so it's 54% total. Confirmed by Press secretary earlier.

Maybe because he’s waiting until the election is over? He’s probably noticed by now that he’s hurting Canada’s Conservative Party.
- That, or he might actually like Mark Carney. The entire tone seemed to change after they spoke.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-tariffs-canada-1.7500316

Holy shit the post-market drops for SPY and QQQ are insane. I haven't seen a post/pre market move this sharp since Covid

They’ll try to spin it in tomorrows finance news, so it may be sharp but not as sharp as it should be.

Don't buy American. Make America lose the trade war and crawl away from these tariffs

I swear that if we could just all ignore him unless he does nice things, we'll make him stop. The tariffs are not his plan. That's someone else pulling the strings. He just likes the attention. Giving a malignant narcissist any kind of supply is just going to make him worse.

Gray rock the shit out of him.

this would have worked in 2016, I doubt it would now. the oligarchs who put the administration in power want their pound of flesh, and they will get it regardless of whose name is in the daily headlines.
hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been fired, research and education slashed, unprecedented damage done to institutions, and civil rights violations not seen in peacetime in generations. no, I'm afraid ignoring Trump isn't going to solve anything.
the oligarchs must be stopped. one way or another.

This Wikipedia page is going to be relevant to all our lives very soon.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act

In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, to alleviate the effects of the...Anyone? Anyone? The Great Depression passed the, anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered? Raised tariffs to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression.
- .. Bueller? ... Bueller?

And crashed the market more!

If the goal is destruction then trump is doing a good job of that.

The goal is to start a fire and to attend the fire sale.
It's always the goal of malignant narcissists.

Trump announces "Things aren't expensive enough."

This is killing so many small businesses. I know mine is basically dead now

Like for brooms and shit?

Imports from Cambodia: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/cambodia

and Vietnam: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/vietnam

smh

I wonder how fast and much daily fashion will change. Like, no more knitted or crocheted items, or their resale value will go way up.
- If their cost goes way up, that might make hand-made American items comparatively affordable, maybe for the first time in modern history. It's (potentially) a good thing for a bad reason, I guess.

Oh boy. It's stagflation time

Talk about no brains. This will only speed up other countries cutting ties with the US. I'm waiting to see when and which country will be the first to cut diplomatic relations with them.

Nah, that ship has sailed. They'll never cut diplomatic ties, because why would they?
They've already decided they need to come together to live in a world without the US... They're already making trade deals and new defense pacts, they're already planning around us

Just trying to understand the Australian perspective on this. Maybe others can correct me.

He's using the term "reciprocal" as a way of saying certain practices are unfair.

For example, we refuse to import raw meat products because we don't have mad cow disease here.

We also don't have american style healthcare, so pharmaceuticals can't be advertised and are purchased exclusively through the federal government procurement scheme.

In response, he's applying a 10% tariff on any Imports from Australia. I assume this is in addition to the aluminium and iron ore tariffs but I'm not sure.

We have a federal election coming up so the opinions of both major parties are relevant. Our current progressive PM says it will hurt the US more than us, that we're not going to respond with tariffs on US products, and we do have legal recourse through our existing free trade agreement.

From here it's hard to see this as anything other than a huge self-own by the Trump Administration. We just don't export a lot of stuff to the US, our stock market has responded positively since the announcement. I would be absolutely gutted if the Australian government made any concessions what so ever, and I don't think I'm alone in that. We have our fair share of MAGA idiots down under, but even they are nationalists, with families. No one here has any interest in letting Trump fuck with our health care system just so Americans pay less in tariffs.

Lmfao buckle up for the second Great Depression, everyone! It’ll be fun! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Where were you when Needle drop

I was copper futures

Brother said "economy is kill"

I said "no"

Y'all better start learning Chinese

Did it come up with random numbers, or did russian scientists device the percentages in hidden laboratories

Figured out where these fake tariff rates come from that Trump is claiming. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.
So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.
Copied from twitter from someone who’s suffering insomnia right now.
Figured out where these fake tariff rates come from that Trump is claiming. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.
So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Thailand/comments/1jq32od/new_import_tariff_to_usa/ml4328d
Source of these trade deficit numbers is in https://www.reddit.com/r/Thailand/s/TKZ68gLs6z
- Thanks for pointing that out. If that is true, it is completely deranged.
- I checked and this does seem to fit for Switzerland.
  Trade deficit of US to Switzerland: 38.5 B
  Exports from Switzerland to US: 63.4 B
  Ratio of the two: 61%
  Half of that as "reciprocal" tariff: 31%

As I understand it, that “rest of the world” is actually a base tariff, and the rest of these are ON TOP OF that.

So China is actually 44%, etc

Who knows? I think they don't get it either.

Huh, Malaysia and Indonesia are also there

From an electrical engineering perspective H O S E D. Historically, “Oh you want to manufacture something cheaply but can’t due to IP issues or CCP conflicts of interests? Why not Malaysia, Vietnam or the Philippines?”
People got to realize this is gonna jack up the supply chain so hard. Texas Instruments an IC manufacturer produces some stuff in texas. If my production is in Malaysia then surprise! Tariff to send components to Malaysia. But wait, programming, testing, packaging, and inventory of the boards is in the USA. So the PCBA is surprise surprise Tariff again. Now that the board is considered finished and ready to be sold, it turns out your customer is in china or anywhere else in the world…. So tariff. These Tariffs compound. The business isn’t going to foot the bill so its gonna get pushed to customers.
I am really curious how the TSMC foundry in AZ is gonna work out. They can produce the wafers but packaging is done still in Taiwan. So tariff to Taiwan , tariff again back to the USA, and the tariff again because its an advanced electronic component?
- Semiconductors (and lots of other things) are excluded
Once more the USA forgets about its biggest former colony

Can't wait for tomorrow's sell off. Its going to be a black Friday Friday.

What a dumbass

This is like watching the toughest guy in the prison who runs the biggest gang just start smashing his own head against the concrete floor

Does that mean oil is also 10% up?

Probably fucking subsidized instead, though I didn’t see specifics about fossil fuels

I was gonna get me some Cambodia and Vietnam from eBay. Now what?

Russia?

Is he acting salty about the Vietnam war or what?

Sweeping tariffs? Shit, I need a new broom

How are they even coming up with the number all these countries supposedly tariff the US?

Cambodia one is based.

Please bring sweeping back. Sweeping is cleanly and good.