A New York Times headline reports the good news for Trump but the good is not enough for the New York Times. The good news must be balanced with bad news, even if it's just a nudging toward amorphous doubt. You know that Trump. There's always more disruption and chaos coming.
What will the NYT say if Trump's tariffs have this effect across the board and all countries drop their tariffs? Will the NYT credit Trump for his success — for his audacious, clever move?
I see that yesterday, the NYT had this headline: "Musk Says He Hopes Europe and U.S. Move to a ‘Zero-Tariff Situation’/The billionaire adviser to the Trump administration appeared to part ways with the president in a videoconference appearance with Italy’s far-right League party." I give the Times credit for slipping in that weasel word, "appeared." The 2 men appeared to part ways. And it appears different today. Now that Vietnam has responded to the incentive — oh, look at that! — the 2 men seem to be going the same way.
Well, they looked like that yesterday too, but the NYT needed to continue on its way, making trouble for Trump. There's always bad news inside any good news.
I need a phrase that's the reverse of "Every cloud has a silver lining." Maybe: "Every pong-pong fruit has its deadly poison seeds." I mean, to hell with the agitation in New York Times headlines! Tonight is the finale of Season 3 of "The White Lotus." Those seeds are getting into one of those protein smoothies Patrick Schwarzenegger keeps whipping up, right?
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181 comments:
Our brilliant and female Ag Secretary just said 50 nations are offering to lower their tariffs. I was super impressed by her.
Chevys and Fords on the streets of Hanoi by July 4th.
"... the good is not enough for the New York Times. The good news must be balanced with bad news."
The New York Times is in the business of selling dopamine hits to mentally ill Democrats, who are addicted to them like a fentanyl user is addicted. It's highly profitable and explains perfectly why they do the things they do.
Trump "kudos" don't sell in the market they are in. Because kudos don't create a dopamine hit in the mind of mentally ill people. Bashing Trump is the only way to get that dopamine to light up in the low-IQ Democrat brain.
Every bright day casts a deep dark shadow.
Today's also the women's college basketball championship game. Too much excitement for the NYT's doldrums.
Biden NYT - was all mostly good new.s "He's doing amazing things!"
Trump is HITLER, just like Walker was..
and for the Exact Same reasons
Trump is not doing nice things..
Trump is Undemocratic (that is, not doing what Democrats want)
That the MAJORITY of Americans support Trump; just PROVES how Undemocratic he is!
Our Professor says...
"I need a phrase that's the reverse of "Every cloud has a silver lining.""
Well, the traditional reverse is:
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,"
Notice that Begley (first comment) like Trump is focused on the trade imbalance and how to correct that with each of our trading partners. Trump is using the tariffs as leverage to make the best deal country by country.
You figure we're headed for zero tariff on steel?
With comparable labor and environmental standards, zero would be a fair trade.
they pushin’ too hard
yeah they be pushin’ on me
just Phuket all!
In front of every silver lining there is a dark cloud!
The American people see the major news media for what it is:
Democrat Party Prop.
NYT's will never admit Trump did anyting right or give him credit for anything. It reflects the ownership, which has always been Globalist, zionist, and liberal. The biggest supporters of Stalin in the 30s and 40s was the NYT's. They didn't get a "conservative" on their Op-ed page till they hired Safire - who of course wasn't a Rightwinger but a liberal Republican.
Shorter NYTs: The only way to save Democracy is to have unelected judges stop Trump.
Israel has zero tariffs on US goods and Trump still imposed a 10% tariff. Reciprocity is not the point. Autarky is.
Wadded Panties in teh Levene aisle…
Liberation day to make America and Americans whole, safe, and viable. The goal is to mitigate the progress that led to World War 1, World War 2, Obama/Biden/Clinton's ethnic Springs, FDR's Great Depression, Mao's Great Leap, and other liberal catastrophes of human choice and wicked solutions.
No mention of Bill Ackman's support for Trump and how Pershing Square bought a significant stake in Nike last August?
Voter and business sentiment will pile pressure on Trump’s trade agenda. Mocking Trump's economic policies is like shooting fish in a barrel. It's fun until you remember that we're all in that barrel.
The company I work for buys some steel from Vietnam. Two weeks ago (before the latest round of tariffs) steel of Vietnam cost about 3/4 the price of American steel.
OTOH, cost isn’t the only factor. The delivery date is indeterminate and three months or more out. Your money is tied up for much of that time. The material may degrade during shipping, and we eat that cost. Shipping costs may spike.
We buy a baseline amount of our highest movers and buy US steel for the bulk of our demand.
Bring (non-union-Dem-grift-paycheck-suck) - steel manufacturing back to the US.
Kak - You're a Biden apologist. No own no credibility.
Well, at least the headline kept faith with the Prime Directive of Progressive Journalism: Orange Man Bad!!! Always!
Every clod has a sliver in a rotting apple.
I don’t think the diagnosis of mental illness is correct. As I’ve said before, the issue is pride. The dopamine addicts could choose to humble themselves and see their neighbor as themselves, but that’s a difficult internal struggle. And if your self image is built upon your sense that you’re better than other people, it’s not likely to be a choice you are going to make. In the which case, as the Greeks taught, the goddess Nemesis is going to come along and humble you whether you want to be humble or not. I prefer we all choose to humble ourselves individually. But as things are going right now, it seems like we’re destined for the return of Nemesis. And it’s probably not going to be pretty.
"Israel has zero tariffs on US goods and Trump still imposed a 10% tariff. Reciprocity is not the point. Autarky is."
Dont worry, the US taxpayer funds everything in Israel. So, Israel will be OK.
BTW, Israel puts a 18 VAT Tax on USA goods. Its a tarriff by another name. but nice try.
"Will the NYT credit Trump for his success — for his audacious, clever move?"
AA, you trying out your gags before your audition in Vegas?
Autarky is one of the stated goals: self-sufficiency and a relationship with neighbors without entanglements that are first-order forcings that fester progress.
The tariffs appear to serve two purposes: 1. achieve reciprocity: U.S. gets fairer treatment, no longer is open consumer market for everyone else; 2. domestic protection: stimulus for higher-cost U.S. industry, onshoring of some manufacturing capacity. 0-0 reciprocity serves goal 1, not goal 2.
The opposite of "Every cloud has a silver lining" is "The New York Times is always full of shit."
Sen. Tuberville said it’s not just the tariff it is everything else like VAT, etc.
Are we using tax revenue from tariffs to balance the budget, or are we trying to use tariffs to drive down imports and replace them with domestic production? Because if you do the second, you can't do the first.
"Sen. Tuberville said it’s not just the tariff it is everything else like VAT, etc."
I somewhat admire how Trump attempts to explain VAT to an audience that largely understands it, all from his perspective as someone who clearly doesn’t grasp how it works. With a bit of editing, there’s potential here for a decent satirical article.
VAT is essentially a sales tax. An American exporter doesn’t pay U.S. sales tax on a car shipped to the EU. Likewise, local competitors in the EU pay the same VAT as American exporters, and EU producers pay the same sales tax in the U.S. as American local producers. These taxes neither disadvantage nor advantage EU or U.S. exporters.
Meanwhile, the rest of the country and the world are witnessing definitive, unambiguous proof that Trump’s idea is mathematically impossible and economically destructive—much to the particular dismay of those who voted for him.
The burdens of the Middle East cannot survive without Israeli support and American backing. The terrorists cannot survive without USAID.
It is depressing to see the level of ignorance about tariffs and VAT on display.
Once again, this Vietnam example could be telling. The announced tariffs already include at least one country that has no tariffs on US goods. I already noted the formula for Trump's tariffs were based on trade deficits, not reciprocal tariffs, a move that is awful in principle and practicality.
I think Althouse is getting at using the news as a morale-buster against one's own people. Every story has to show that Trump is bad - well, that's partisan politics as it has often been. But behind individual stories lies the conviction of the NYT that the American people should be sad and down because they're mostly no good. There's an implicit theory that: "Nothing will be better till the revolution and then we''ll kill most of you. That will be better." That's why "slant" and "spin" and PR don't quite cover what is going on. It's very unusual so there's no folk phrase to cover it.
Tariffs, VATs, arbitrage, progressive principles, etc. Vance mentioned a few in his speech to the Europeans. We have diverse problems with you. Straighten up.
"Every cloud has a silver lining.".. and that lining is a lightning bolt about to strike.
"I see you've got your fist out, say your piece and get out
Yes, I get the gist of it, but it's alright
Sorry that you feel that way, the only thing there is to say
Every silver lining's got a touch of grey"
Shorter lefty kak: How dare anyone support Trump. That's illegal.
Every silver lining has its cloud.
Every rose has its thorn.
Every party needs a pooper, that’s why we invited you.
Trump had better rack up some wins soon beyond just little Vietnam. If inflation is running wild, everyone's 401k is way down, and all he can say is that GM shareholders might incrementally benefit from competing to sell to the portion of the Vietnamese who can afford an American car, voters are going to put the Democrats right back into power.
"The American people see the major news media for what it is:
Democrat Party Prop."
Initially, I read that as "Democrat Party Poop." Upon further review, both work.
RCOCEAN II said...
NYT's will never admit Trump did anyting right or give him credit for anything. It reflects the ownership, which has always been Globalist, zionist, and liberal. The biggest supporters of Stalin in the 30s and 40s was the NYT's. They didn't get a "conservative" on their Op-ed page till they hired Safire - who of course wasn't a Rightwinger but a liberal Republican.
4/6/25, 9:03 AM
…
As always your antisemitism is showing. They have always been a far left organization. Obvi they covered up stalins atrocities but they also covered up Hitlers bec they did not want people to think they advocate for Jewish policies.
Show me an article in the last 30 years that supports Israel’s right to defend itself. To my mind this is how you distinguish criticism of the world’s only Jewish state from antisemitism. If you’re criticizing on a scale of ten something jews do on a scale of one and you’re ignoring others doing the same thing on a scale of ten you have a personal problem with Jews.
I don’t know why you do but it’s clear to all that you do.
Every silver-lined cloud has a shit-ton of lightening hidden inside of it, just ready to strike us and kill our democracy!
Watched Bessent on MTP. Another brilliant guy and not a lawyer. He cited an MIT study that Trump’s first term tariff of 20% on China resulted in a 0.7% price increase in the US.
He’s very good.
Take a $40,000 car manufactured in the EU: for the consumer in the EU, the VAT on average will add $8400 for a cost to the consumer of $48,400. The same applies to a $40,000 car built in the U.S. and sold in the EU, ceteris parabis.
That $40,000 car built in the EU and sold in the U.S. will incur an average sales tax of about 7%, so the U.S. consumer will pay $42,800 for the EU built car and the same for the U.S. built car, ceteris parabis.
In case 1, the EU collects $8400 from the U.S. carmaker for each sale, and in case 2, the U.S. as a whole collects $2800 from the EU carmaker. Now, we can quibble about the incidence of, who pays, the two taxes, but the very fact that the two taxes have very different amounts completely guts the argument that there is no real effect on the barriers seen on selling across the two borders.
ChatGPT Boy LLR-democratical Rich: "Meanwhile, the rest of the country and the world are witnessing definitive, unambiguous proof that Trump’s idea is mathematically impossible and economically destructive—much to the particular dismay of those who voted for him."
It was just a few months back when Richie Boy proclaimed, after a very long and boring treatise where poll numbers were twisted beyond all recognition, it was "mathematicallly impossible" for kamala to lose to Trump.
It was just a few years back when LLR-democratical Rich, the Harry Sisson of Althouse blog, proclaimed, after a very long and boring treatise where business performance numbers were twisted beyond all recognition, it was "mathematically impossible" for Tesla/SpaceX/X/xAI/Boring Company/Neuralink to survive since they were all "fake companies" and "frauds" and their failure was "inevitable".
Anyone see a pattern here for our Abacus Boy poster?
RCOCEAN II said...
"Israel has zero tariffs on US goods and Trump still imposed a 10% tariff. Reciprocity is not the point. Autarky is."
Dont worry, the US taxpayer funds everything in Israel. So, Israel will be OK.
4/6/25, 9:36 AM
…
As far as I know the aid Israel receives is for development and purchase of weapons including most USA weapon systems. So it’s really giving money to buy our stuff or out another way our aid to Israel is nearly completely we give them some weapons to fight people who want to murder Americans.
They use their resources to purchase weapons, and we also give them money to purchase our weapons. As all people are aware, they are the little satan and we are the great satan. As we learned on September 11 as well as khobar towers etc want to murder all of us. Israel is fighting our enemies. Is that bad?
"Show me an article in the last 30 years that supports Israel’s right to defend itself"
LOL. Yes, the Sulzberger family, and the Jewish writers and editors at the NYT's all hate Jews. Man, i guess if you keep saying up is down and the sun rises in the West, some Dumbo will believe you. And of course, the best defense is an offense.
"Just remember, inside every silver lining, is a dark cloud"
-George Carlin
Is it just me or is NYT receiving a disproportionate amount
of Althousian attention since Bezos offended the WaPoo staff?
Kak-
Tariffs will raise revenue.
On shoring jobs will also raise revenue.
DOGE will cut expense.
There’s a formula for a stable economy in there.
"Watched Bessent on MTP. Another brilliant guy and not a lawyer. He cited an MIT study that Trump’s first term tariff of 20% on China resulted in a 0.7% price increase in the US."
The Trump administration and his supporters keep talking about how everyone adapted easily to the tariffs Trump put in place in his first term. But those tariffs were (bad) tweaks to the existing system. The plan Trump unveiled last Wednesday is something else: an attempt to blow the whole thing up.
You also can't say, as many MAGA supporters on Althouse are, that the current system had to be blown up because it wasn't working and also claim that the sell-off on Thursday and Friday was unjustified. If you're blowing up the system, investors in that system should absolutely be concerned.
Kak - give it a rest.
Your team brought us gain of function lab leak Chi Com Covid.
Your team silenced and censored facts adn truths that we re inconvenient to the twinging democrat neo-Marxist narratives.
Your team opened a secure border and illegally brought in and transported with US tax payer dollars - 11+ million illegals.
Your team lies.
"surge the border" Biden demanded! It's on tape.
Your team brought us 4 years of horrible inflation.
Your team prints and spends money like fools.
Your team gives billions of our tax dollars to bogus international garbage - from the Iranian Islamic Supremacists - to they-them bert and ernie.
I have read that it's not just Vietnam, but a number of countries are in discussions with Trump about lowering tariffs and removing trade barriers. Argentina is one. Let's see how it plays out. I hope Trump will be willing to declare victory if those negotiations come to fruition. I do wish he'd done the negotiations first, with the threat of punitive tariffs, rather than the other way around, but maybe they needed to see that he was serious.
@rehajm - I think it’s just you. But I have noticed references to right wing outlets that she swore once upon a time she would never read.
Seems to me a tariff is pretty much a VAT applied only to imported goods. So buy "Murican!
RCOCEAN II said...
"'Show me an article in the last 30 years that supports Israel’s right to defend itself'
LOL. Yes, the Sulzberger family, and the Jewish writers and editors at the NYT's all hate Jews. Man, i guess if you keep saying up is down and the sun rises in the West, some Dumbo will believe you. And of course, the best defense is an offense."
That is a lot of words to say that you *couldn't* find any such article . . . .
With more nations cooperating on tariffs instead of squealing I’m reminded of a saying from the legendary economist Mike Tyson who said Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.
…yesterday in the lowcountry the organized protests were about Jack Nicklaus designing green complexes that are excessively difficult once the greens speed up…
…one thing to keep in mind: some nations with certain goods l
will still have a comparative advantage even with new tariffs so the incentives may not be sufficient to capitulate. I thought Vietnam might be one of those places, so this is good news indeed…
VATs compound tariffs. If I sell an $80 product in to a country with a 25% tariff, 25% distribution markup and 20% VAT the math is:
No tariff no VAT customer pays $100
No tariff customer pays VAT customer pays $120
Tariff plus VAT customer pays $150
I've got a long time friend who, like the NYT, is obsessed with "making Scumty Dumpty Trumpty" look bad. My in box is loaded with screeds every day. He's a nice enough guy and we like to talk sports. But on politics I simply click on by.
Vance said on Fox this morning he and Trump are implementing a "total shift in the way we've done economic policy in America."
Economic policy in the United States has generally favored corporations, and the stock market's value on Wednesday reflected the expectation that this trend would continue. However, if this assumption proves incorrect, investors will naturally need to reassess the value of their entire portfolios
Trump should accept the offer from Vietnam as part of a win, realignment, and signal to others on how they can reduce their pain.
Good on Trump and good on Vietnam.
Time for some photoshop play with faces in that “Russian roulette” scene with DeNiro in “The Deer Hunter.”
“So it’s really giving money to buy our stuff or out another way our aid to Israel is nearly completely we give them some weapons to fight people who want to murder Americans.”
Money well-spent, in my opinion.
Lady kakAH?
If Trump and his team are successful - the democrats suffer.
If the American people, including the middle/working folks, are happy and thriving - the left have a heart attack.
"...investors will naturally need to reassess the value of their entire portfolios"
Waiting for it to crash first is bad form.
Last week I lost enough to buy a nice house, but I'm not selling. I'm still way way ahead. I've lived by the plan of buying when people are scared, and panic is even better. I've missed some great ones though. I was looking to buy up real estate in 2010 when homes were 80K that are worth 500K today. I was scared and that was dumb. Fear can make you run off a cliff, or stand still in the highway.
If the tarrif strategy is successful, they media will just move on the next outrage. We haven't heard much about the US-Mexico border lately for a reason.
As much as folks try to make people think that "trump is dumb", "he doesn't understand business"... One of his superpowers is that "he does understand business" and he is "not dumb". The VAT tax is a nice example. Many politicians wouldn't have included that in the tariff equation, but Trump is "not dumb" and understands it.
"RCOCEAN II said...
BTW, Israel puts a 18 VAT Tax on USA goods. Its a tarriff by another name. but nice try."
BTW, Israel puts a 18 VAT Tax on USA goods. Its a tarriff by another name. but nice try.
One might infer that Douglas Levene is either a Clintonian liar or Kamala-like dumb.
Take your choice, Dougie.
So, Vietnam continues to make iPhones sold in the US, and imposes no tariffs on the US goods their workers can't afford? Nah, I don't think Trump sees that as a win for US workers. Thanks to the Paris Accords, US manufacturing suffers an energy cost penalty that China, India and third world countries don't. Tariffs are one way to level the playing field until the USA can free itself of EPA and other Green shut-down of coal and nuclear energy. I hope someone in the Republican Congress and White House is working on that path to recover American manufacturing jobs.
The Grateful Dead took care of it, "Every silver lining has a touch of grey" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzvk0fWtCs0
You seem to have become much more overtly skeptical of the NYT in recent months, Althouse.
Is that faulty thinking on my part?
To expand on my previous point: Remember 2008-2010. Things looked really bad, but the people who lost the most, lost because they though it was the new normal and reacted accordingly. In fact, it was an uncommon opportunity. There was real estate, stocks, and my boss got so spooked he sold me his company for what I recovered the first year.
Where would you be today if you invested rather than ran or hunkered down? That goes for every downturn in history, and they aren't usually planned as part of a realignment, which is likely a much better opportunity.
"You seem to have become much more overtly skeptical of the NYT in recent months, Althouse.
Is that faulty thinking on my part?"
It's like a lot of stuff you hang o to long after it has or will ever be useful again. I love the feeling I get when I throw that crap out, and enjoy the clear open space left behind.
Bagoh - You're a wise man.
What about, "Outside of every silver lining there's a cloud?"
“No one has ever made money betting against America.”
Warren Buffett, my Omaha neighbor.
So, we won the tariff war?
And we can also say that we won the Vietnam War?
"Is there nothing that will satisfy this madman?!!!!"
Dave Begley quoted Warren Buffett:..
“No one has ever made money betting against America.”
George Soros? He tried to wreck the British economy back in the day. He’s done his best to destroy us from within.
4/6/25, 12:37
Autarchy is not a good idea or a workable idea or an attainable idea -- certainly not at this point in our history or the world's. Trump and his team probably recognize that. I don't know if they're clear on what they actually do want. Once we get some reductions in foreign tariffs and some progress towards reindustrialization and reshoring wouldn't that be enough?
Like a lot of industrializing countries, Vietnam is developing a well-off middle class. Just what they'd want to buy from us, I can't say, but we must make something they'd like. If nothing else, we can always welcome their tourists.
Just what's involved in Israel's right to defend itself is something people argue about.
So far, Israel, Vietnam and Taiwan have offered zero tariffs in response, and The White House has received calls from 50 nations asking to start negotiations. This action was just announced 2 business days ago, and the tariffs haven't even started yet. Maybe people should wait at least a week before exposing their expertise in international trade.
Lazarus, if we have nothing they want to buy, why tariffs? This applies to other countries as well.
Peachy said...
"Bagoh - You're a wise man."
Yes. Yes, he is. This time around I ignored my timidity and bought in.
"Autarchy is not a good idea or a workable idea or an attainable idea --"
What do you mean by autarchy? After a short search, I have found several different definitions. For some, I'd agree that autarchy is not a good idea but for others, I don't see a problem.
I'd think it's not really possible to have a productive discussion on the topic without a definition of the term that's agreed upon.
except industrial dominance is what built the middle class what allowed us to win our wars at some point it was decided that a service economy was a be all and end all,
All the farm and ranch ground in America appreciated at least 10% last week. The reason why is that if Trump can really open up foreign export markets to US farm products, then farms and ranches make more money.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Bessent bought some farm land this year.
autarky(n.)
1610s, "self-sufficiency," from Greek autarkeia "sufficiency in oneself, independence," from autarkēs "self-sufficient, having enough, independent of others" (also used of countries), from autos "self" (see auto-) + arkein "to ward off, keep off," also "to be strong enough, sufficient" (see archon).
- etymonline.com
My most recent favorite example, is when the Times, in a "news" article about Trump's strange "obsession" with fentanyl smuggled in from Canada mockingly "reported" that "only" 34.8 pounds had been seized in Biden's last year. Although, for wholly non-political reasons Co-Pilot refused to answer how many lethal doses this amount might create, Grok cheerly replied: "7.9" million. The odds that if it were Trump in office while 7.9 lethal doses crossed the border in a single year, the Times would completely ignore this fact?
Autarky offers an opportunity to, among other things, avoid needless entanglements, and encourages productive relationships.
the league was a populist anti immigration faction that was the anchor of much of the berlusconi and successor coalitions,
“Americans who want to retire right now, Americans who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what’s happening.” ~ Scott Bessent Trump's US treasury secretary,
They didn’t, until you clowns blew a huge hole in their hard earned savings. They are certainly watching now. 🤡
Bessent’s mouth must be sore. You can only do this for so long. Trump’s MAGA Tariffs: taking the American economy “From steady as she goes” to “Get ready for there she blows”🧨🧨🧨
how to say i'm shorting massive blocks of stocks, via blackrock or vanguard without saying so,
I'm not really sure what trump was after with all this tariff crap, but i'm sure it was not zero tariffs. That realy goes against his back to 1890s rhetoric.
But, if somehow he gets an attack of sanity, or is made to be sane, working out zero tariff deal with everyone except China does provide him a way out of the dumbest thing ever AND let's him claim to be a brilliant negotiator who was playing his usual chess in the 5th dimension.
he has been focused on the question of reindustrialization since the 80s, the Dems pretended to, plant closing act Michael Moore's shtick, but then went along with NAFTA and China admission to the WTO act
Jim 2:11: “… does provide him a way out of the dumbest thing ever….”
See Professor. There are people who buy NYT/DNC nonsense hook, line and sinker encouraging them to keep it up. Meanwhile, people outside their mindless groupthink - who know something of economics - are waiting to see what happens.
All residential real estate in Detroit also increased by 10% last week.
20 years ago the rescue of stranded Astronauts woul dbe wall to wall coverage
But Trump and Musk.
Filthy people all day, every day.
Kaki:
A very unfair comment. Scott Bessent is a brilliant guy who is doing a great job. Bessent and Navarro are the intellectual backers to Trump’s policies and they explain it in clear terms.
Shame on you.
Kakistocracy 1:58: Scott Bessant’s history confirms he knows whereof he speaks. Kai’s absent profile confirms he does not.
"self-sufficiency," from Greek autarkeia "sufficiency in oneself, independence," from autarkēs "self-sufficient, having enough, independent of others" (also used of countries)"
Being able to care for yourself does not preclude interactions with others. There is value in not having to depend on others, is there not? That doesn't mean you have to shut yourself off from everybody else.
Whenever anyone says they don't want the US involved in foreign wars, they're called an isolationist. Usually, it's by those who profit from the conflict. I don't see where Trump has called for the end of all trade outside the country, just that he wants that trade to be fair for the US. And, as in the "isolationist" example above, it appears it's the people who are profiting from the US getting screwed in trade deals who are complaining the loudest.
It's a great time to buy.
Being able to care for yourself does not preclude interactions with others.
Quite the contrary. It enables caring, helping, interacting with others by choice.
Haggis.
““We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913,” Trump said shortly after his inauguration. “That’s when we were a tariff country.”
The problem is that, in tariffs’ 19th-century heyday, governments raised far less revenue overall and spent far less money. Maybe that is Trump’s intention, but it is not realistic. Unless of course, he plans to abolish Medicare, Social Security or Medicaid.😂
The other issue is that using tariffs as a revenue source is at odds with the idea of using them to support local industry. If local industry flourishes, you get little tariff revenue, and vice versa.
Iman said...
"Haggis."
Meat Pie!
The source of the use of the word "appeared" was the Trump-supporting NY Post.
Shortbread
The other issue is that using tariffs as a revenue source is at odds with the idea of using them to support local industry. If local industry flourishes, you get little tariff revenue, and vice versa.
If we get either one of those, we are still far better off than getting none of those.
I can hardly believe all these clowns bleating(sorry about mixing metaphors) about the Dow. Which was WAY OVERDUE for a 10-20% correction.
I just heard a podcast interview with Sarah Pillen. She's co-CEO (with her brother) of Pillen Family Farms, Inc. and DNA Genetics. It is a top 15 pork producer in the US. She noted that pork prices have not been good the past 24 months. She also said that US pork consumption has been flat and the US exports 25% of its pork production.
Now what it foreign exports of pork double or triple? Prices will go up. Corn and bean prices go up. Land prices go up.
We won't hear Cramer talking about that on CNNC on Monday.
IOW, the US economy is WAY MORE than the stock market.
I know Sarah and her dad. Sarah is a Creighton Law alum. Her day is Governor of NE. Her dad wisely got into the swine genetics business in 2003. In about 2020, Pillen and some other hog producers bought the Hormel pork plant in Fremont. Pillen has vertically integrated his business. Super smart guy.
The Dow Jones goeth up. The Dow Jones cometh down. Blessed be the Dow Jones.
Donald Trump just won a war with Vietnam. A trade war, but still a war. Now watch the damned Democrats go berserk.
@ DB — Scott Bessent going full sycophant is one of the most concerning things for me.Treasury Secretary is supposed to be the safe pair of hands.
fat bastird michael moore claimed to care about working people, but in truth, he has been awol in fact he pushed the ruinous green nude eel, that advantaged China and India,
Vietnam's tariff on US goods averages 9.7%. Almost the 10% Trump tariff on Vietnamese products. The tariff is not what Trump is after. Vietnam is one of the SE Asian countries China uses to transship goods to the US to avoid the higher tariffs on them. Mexico and Argentina are also transshippers for Chinese goods.
"Am I banned from commenting? Is it automatic or do you weed them out one by one, as logic makes your brain melt?"
LOL! Hag, if you don't know by now what will get you deleted by Althouse, then you are so out of contact with logic you might as well be on a different planet.
Look who's getting cold feet. 🤡
“Hell is coming."
“The country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country. But, business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust.
President @realDonaldTrump has elevated the tariff issue to the most important geopolitical issue in the world, and he has gotten everyone’s attention. So far, so good.
And yes, other nations have taken advantage of the U.S. by protecting their home industries at the expense of millions of our jobs and economic growth in our country.
But, by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.
The president has an opportunity to call a 90-day time out, negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country.
If, on the other hand, on April 9th we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate.
What CEO and what board of directors will be comfortable making large,
long-term, economic commitments in our country in the middle of an economic nuclear war?
I don’t know of one who will do so.
When markets crash, new investment stops, consumers stop spending money, and businesses have no choice but to curtail investment and fire workers.
And it is not just the big companies that will suffer. Small and medium size businesses and entrepreneurs will experience much greater pain. Almost no business can pass through an overnight massive increase in costs to their customers. And that’s true even if they have no debt, and, unfortunately, there is a massive amount of leverage in the system.
Business is a confidence game. The president is losing the confidence of business leaders around the globe. The consequences for our country and the millions of our citizens who have supported the president — in particular low-income consumers who are already under a huge amount of economic stress — are going to be severely negative. This is not what we voted for.
The President has an opportunity on Monday to call a time out and have the time to execute on fixing an unfair tariff system.
Alternatively, we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down.
May cooler heads prevail.” ~ Bill Ackman @BillAckman
https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1908992002366292286
"What will the NYT say if Trump's tariffs have this effect across the board and all countries drop their tariffs?"
They'll drop the topic like it never existed.
Have they mentioned the price of eggs lately?
or the very serious signal matter, lol, that was a month ago,
Markets Prepare for Tumultuous Week: Stock Futures Drop, Along With Bitcoin, Oil Prices ~ WSJ
The super rare, can't make more, uncorrelated asset, the only hedge you need, aka BTC is also down 5% (vs USD). 😅
DOW down another 5% - down to 4800 at one point, at 4852 at the moment. 🔪🔻💎👇
We’re about to find out where the bottom of a bottomless pit is.
US Stock PE Ratio
Hey, everybody! I found a sign from the demonstrations yesterday that I totally agree with - as long as it's done nonviolently, of course: link.
I believe Trump wants to push us toward consumption taxes and lower income tax rates, so going to zero everywhere doesn't seem likely. The best places to do that have similar labor/environmental costs to ours, so not Vietnam or India.
If only we hadn't given Chinese Most Favored Nation status thirty odd years ago, they wouldn't have sucked up so much of our manufacturing. The Chinese bought Clinton and others using the Riadys of Indonesia. The Bushes thought semi-capitalist prosperity would decrease oppression and hostility, and it did, for a while.
If Trump cured cancer the NYT would run articles about
Bich,
"governments raised far less revenue overall and spent far less money."
I am already strongly in favor of Trump; you don't have to keep trying to sell me.
"I am already strongly in favor of Trump; you don't have to keep trying to sell me."
You will never convince a leftist that the purpose of government is not to raise and spend as much money as possible.
Trump’s economic game plan—slap on high tariffs, bring factories back home, keep immigrants out, and block foreign investment—just doesn’t add up. It sounds tough, but when you step back and look at how things actually work, you start to see a tangle of contradictions the administration doesn’t seem willing to face.
If you want to rebuild U.S. manufacturing, you need workers. Lots of them. But immigration is being clamped down. Meanwhile, education and job training can’t magically produce an industrial workforce overnight. So where are the people going to come from? At the same time, foreign companies willing to invest in America—like in the U.S. Steel deal—are being told to stay out. We’re saying “bring jobs here” and “stay out” in the same breath.
Tariffs are being pitched as the cure-all, but they don’t fix labor shortages, or build infrastructure, or deal with the realities of global supply chains. And even if we could bring everything home to produce, we’d still need to invest in schools, hospitals, housing, and transit to support a bigger workforce—just like the countries we’ve spent decades outsourcing to already did. Tariffs raises those costs substantially.
What’s even more frustrating is how few people in Trump’s inner circle seem to recognize any of this. The policy playbook is being written by folks with strong ideological views but not a lot of hands-on experience in how economies actually function. They see China as a threat (which may be fair), but miss the practical realities of how China got where it is. They focus on sovereignty but not sustainability.
Worse, there’s little sense of urgency to sort any of this out—not from the administration, not from much of the GOP. But markets aren’t fooled. Investors are already nervous. The bigger question is whether anyone inside the White House is even listening.
“Look who's getting cold feet. 🤡”
Just put some socks on, Lady kakAH.
Narciso: The League was originally The Northern League, basically a secession or at least devolution movement for the industrialized north of Italy, away from the tax-sucking mafia-infested south and the Roman bureaucrats. I think they have deemphasized the “Northern” part and, as you say, focus more on MIGA in general.
He was born that way…
I guess the simple answer to the stock market sell off is Trump's tariffs. Of course, we are ignoring the fact that inflation drove up the market with government spending.
Think of the sell off as a small forest fire that cleans out the deadwood.
@Goldenpause, if Trump came out against childhood cancer Democrats would be agitating for more children getting cancer.
Kak: “ So where are the people going to come from?”
We have so many who have completely left the workforce. And we have underemployed people. We have exurban populations dying “deaths of despair” from deindustrialization. We have urban youths with no future, stabbing and shooting each other because the only thing they have left is some perverse respect concept.
If we cut off the flow of immigrants, we lose the easy excuse for not helping all the above people.
JSM
@ JM: There’s a pretty big contradiction in the idea that we can solve America’s trade deficit just by bringing back the industries we lost decades ago. That kind of thinking treats two very different goals—shrinking the trade gap and reviving old manufacturing—as if they’re the same. But they’re not, and pretending they are only leads to bad assumptions.
The industries people want to bring back—like textiles, paper, or basic manufacturing—just don’t make up a meaningful share of our total imports anymore. Even if we revived them, it wouldn’t come close to fixing the deficit. And more importantly, those industries rely on low-cost production to survive. But the U.S. isn’t a low-cost country. We’ve got high wages, expensive housing, rising healthcare and education costs—the whole system is expensive. And if we add tariffs on top of that, we’re not helping. We’re turning an already high-cost structure into an ultra high-cost one, making it even harder for these industries to be competitive.
At that point, we’re not really fixing anything. We’re either forcing consumers and businesses to pay more for the same goods, or we’re quietly shifting the cost of keeping these industries alive onto taxpayers. That’s not restoring free-market strength—it’s redistribution, not pure capitalism, dressed up in patriotic language.
And even if we get past that, we still hit a hard reality: the skills needed for today’s manufacturing are not the same as the skills that powered the last century. We’re not short on workers—we’re short on the right kind of training, the right kind of mobility, and the right kind of strategy. And immigration restrictions only make it worse. So if we’re serious about rebuilding American industry, we need to be honest about where we are—and what it really takes to move forward.
Honestly, the only hope—assuming neither Congress nor the courts intervene (as they should but probably won’t)—is that Trump uses these various concessions on trade barriers to declare victory and halt the doomsday machine.
So here is the problem for Trump:
1) If he wants re-shoring, he can't negotiate these away. So he has to keep them up on Vietnam, China etc.
2) Its not clear the tariffs are high enough to bring back a lot of production. I had an American metal fabricator quote me for items I make in China and Vietnam. Their price was 150% the retail price. I sell it for $40 they quoted me $60. Since I buy it for $10, even a 50% tariff still puts them out of play.
3) It takes years to build a factory in America. You gave companies zero time to do this, and while they're paying these tariffs, guess what? You make less money so you can't build the factory even if it would be cost effective.
4) USG is very poor with compliance on Chinese firms selling on Amazon. They will underinvoice their imports and not pay. American firms will not do that and will lose business to them.
5) USG currently doesn't tax Chinese Amazon sellers. ZERO. The stupid tax treaty was made in the 80's so they never imagined an offshore company could sell billions on Amazon or Temu and never be taxed. American importers are taxed at the corporate level and then again at the personal level.
So, what's going to happen? American firms will be closing more than Chinese firms will. Great strategy.
They needed to do a lot of PREPATORY work if they wanted to use any of these strategies. The easiest way out is to take the trade negotiation deals offered.
I don't think Trump will do that until polling comes in and it will with bad economic numbers.
China became China over 45 years. You can't pass a single new tariff and fix that in a month.
The tariffs offer an incentive over labor and environmental arbitrage toward forward-looking, not past investments.
I should mention that tariffs CAN work but they take time.
How did Vietnam start as an exporter?
China got super 501 tariffs on bedroom furniture. This allowed Taiwanese firms to open factories there to compete with Chinese furniture. Later on locals also opened factories and over time they have added more products. Samsung moved phone production there because China was copying their phones BEFORE SAMSUNG FINISHED TOOLING UP.
So, yes, you can get production to move but it takes time.
Also, Americans should understand its not 1950 anymore. I visited metal fabricators in Vietnam that had BETTER MORE MODERN machines than my American fabricator has.
And everyone had robots or near-robots. Laser cutting, robotic welders. China sells robots. And Vietnam buys them.
So if you think we just need robots...we do, but it may not help as much as people think.
I do think America needs to fix this, but we also have the reserve currency so I'm not sure its possible.
I actually wonder about the Chinese Yuan. Its not freely convertible. Its not freely traded. Are we sure its exchange rate is "good?"
I think we also made a horrible deal with China and the WTO. If you don't know - they literally ban our main products. Movies! only allow 6 foreign movies per year. Google, Facebook, Twitter - banned basically.
Ironically they can advertise on those platforms. Why don't we ban that? Ban our products - you don't get access to them to sell products.
"If we cut off the flow of immigrants, we lose the easy excuse for not helping all the above people."
The government didn't seem to have any trouble finding the money to bring people here from South America, seems like it would be easy enough to find people in places like- say, Chicago- and help them to get to where the jobs are.
The downside (you knew there would be one, right?) is that you'd have to find a way to convince those people that working to support themselves was preferable to sitting on their asses and collecting money confiscated from the productive people in this country. Which, of course, won't fly.
Because who gets the blame for attempting to explain that? Well- whoever it is who insists that people should be willing to work and not expect the government be their mommies and daddies. They might stop voting for you when the "free stuff" spigot is shut off, you know.
So- not Democrats, that's for sure.
"Honestly, the only hope—assuming neither Congress nor the courts intervene (as they should but probably won’t)—is that Trump uses these various concessions on trade barriers to declare victory and halt the doomsday machine."
I will say - Trump is poised to have several styles of wins, if he takes them. Sure, they are not quite what he planned but they are wins. He should have thought about this before, for example, to have pre-set up a deal with Israel. Instant win, shows others what they can do.
But instead its "let's talk about it" OK, but you're going to get a recession.
Every single importer is not placing orders. We're paralyzed. Its not even the tariff so much as what happens if I place an order, pay the tariff, and the next week Trump ends the tariffs. I'm stuck holding a bag.
Also, expect a lot of American amazon sellers to fold. Chinese are just going under invoice, and how are we going to catch them? We don't have enough staff. Each importer might have 3 people 10 people 100 people working for them.
BTW, China was also dumb this way. Importing also creates jobs. They keep pushinhg subsidies at every product we make and sell there. MRI machines? They invested in creating their own cheaper ones. That is fine in capitalism, but they actually use STATE FUNDS to do this. How can a car company compete on price is a Chinese EV firm had free capital given to it by the state?
"You can't pass a single new tariff and fix that in a month."
Aside from the fact that it hasn't been a month yet, this (lack of instantaneous results) is what leftards are whining about.
But if it's not that, it would be something else.
Mason G writes: "Aside from the fact that it hasn't been a month yet, this (lack of instantaneous results) is what leftards are whining about."
Trump faces a simple political problem: tariffs will bring immediate economic pain, while the benefits—long-term economic restructuring—will take years. Trump bets voters will endure the hardship, but Americans aren’t known for patience and may vote them out instead.
The key question for the GOP is: will voters see enough economic gains—manufacturing restructuring, on-shoring, new plants—before the midterms?
The middle class of old is not coming back and neither are the industries, but a new type of middle class and new type of industry is, and not just here, but everywhere. A.I. and robotics is going to very quickly create a new world none of us envisioned, where A.I. eliminates non-labor work even faster than robotics eliminates labor, but both will happen, not overnight and not entirely, but pretty fast and furious. Like past disruptors, it will help poor people live better, and easier, while throwing a lot of problems at our sociology.
Those are going to require some creative new ideas to deal with, but we will, because we have to, and just when we do, hello sweet meteor of death.
I asked Grok, and he says we can't really stop one of those. The physics are just too enormous unless we do it many years ahead of time, which is not our style.
.
LLR-democratical Rich: "So if we’re serious about rebuilding American industry, we need to be honest about where we are—and what it really takes to move forward"
Morgan Freeman Narrator Voice: Of course, LLR-democratical Rich was a passionate supporter of marxists kamala and Stolen Valor Walz and their marxist policy prescriptions for moving forward, including wide-open borders, gang/cartel-conrolled neighborhoods, unrestricted fentanyl and children smuggling into the US, continued round the clock printing of more and more dollars keeping us on a pathway to Zimbabwe-ville, continued massive tariff and trade imbalances with every other nation on earth, allowing the EU to direct US troops into never ending forever wars, etc. All the usual globalist "give us all of America's money forever" and act as our world policeman on your American dime.
Abacus Boy Ric is already strongly on record as to the policies he believes we should be following "to move forward", and it was always what the dems have been doing for 50 years...only much, much faster.
Its funny Li'l Richie thinks he can just post and have everyone forget where he has really stood for years!
So nobody followed the link in my 5:37pm comment? Fools! It's a poster about 'Kakistocracy' at one of yesterday's demonstrations. Well worth the 5 seconds.
" by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike"
Are you certain they are disproportionate?
https://youtu.be/9uNLn75BEFA?si=D9usg3YB5NNiGjEj&t=53
Market futures plummeting, Trump bragging about his golf game. This what you Trumpists voted for. Here comes Monday…
I clicked and saw, Dr. Weevil. Good find, but that's all I have to say about that.
Whether you are panicked about a Trump policy or see it as another success not understood until it's obvious, at least we finally have a President...
and one who is fighting for average Americans. If you voted for the guy who couldn't walk, talk or find his way off stage , and were prepared to do it again, let's just say your bar is lower than ours.
The recent market drop puts it where it was last year at this time.
Democrats - Sewer deluxe - are psychotic
The massive march of ignorant, fake-based idiots who refuse to watch the Bret Baier interview of Team Doge.
Oh look! Russia Collusion lunatic P-Inga pops in and pretending she has a clue about what is going on! Hilarious!
P-Inga has not yet recovered from the reduction in child trafficking into the country and removal of explicit pornography from elementary schools.
Its not possible for normal people to ever appease these lefty psychotics.
They have no idea what they are protesting. Literally they have no idea what DOGE or Elon Musk is even doing. Thats what happens when you fry your brain on MSNBC all day.
Democrats killed Epstein in prison.
Le Cultist,
Regarding Epstein - Are you that dumb? The info is being held back and redacted.
Prediction:
If Trump manages to fix the rot - the corruptocrats and their cult minions will rush in to take credit.
Democrats killed Epstein in prison.
There is a pedo mob inside the rotten sewer.
Kakistocracy said:
DOW down another 5% - down to 4800 at one point, at 4852 at the moment.
That would be the S&P 500 futures, not the DOW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTB4NjBzK8c Dr. Bashir says, "Then I shall endeavor to become more cynical with each passing day, look gift horses square in the mouth, and find clouds in every silver lining"
"That would be the S&P 500 futures, not the DOW."
Otter: Point of parliamentary procedure!
Hoover: Don't screw around, they're serious this time!
Otter: Take it easy, I'm pre-law.
Boon: I thought you were pre-med.
Otter: What's the difference?
I like how the people who know absolutely nothing about economics are lecturing us here on economics. All of a sudden they're experts on tariffs.
If they want me to look at White Lotus they need to put Aubrey Plaza back in it.
I'd watch her peel turnips for eight episodes.
Good catch Rit -- thank you!
Bagoh20 writes: "The recent market drop puts it where it was last year at this time."
The refusal to distinguish between a 20% drop over 6 months and a 15% drop in 3 days is extraordinarily foolish.
In 2022, we did not have a president who was trying to blow up the global trading system that the market's valuation was predicated on. Now we do.
How long do you think it will take to erase all of our bilateral trade deficits, which is Trump's goal? A start would be not extending $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. And how does eliminating trade deficits (which requires slashing imports, and therefore tariff revenue) have a meaningful impact on the budget deficit?
So reading this thread a few observations.
1. The division between Main Street and Wall Street could not be more obvious. The Biden administration with help from their Republican allies created a situation where 8% of the people own 94% of the assets.
2. The 8% of people who have all of the assets are mad at Trump. They own the main stream media and they are going to let everyone know how they feel.
3. Most of the people in the US are not particularly concerned about the asset they don’t own losing value or what Carlos Slims NYTs and its readers have to say.
4. Rich is really stupid. It is easy to see why he has been wrong about everything since he started changing his handle on this blog forum. He is even more loud and wrong about this than he was when he said Biden was healthy.
5. It is easy to see where we will be in a month at this point. The negotiations are going to be quick and bloody. This situation is very much one where a hundred criminals were all caught and arrested after stealing a lot of money and they race to see who will rat the others out first.
6. The 8% of the country is starting to realize their corrupt system is being pulled down and many of them are switching sides. Lawyers, DEI administrators and HR are not going to have a place on the team though.
"Trump faces a simple political problem: tariffs will bring immediate economic pain, while the benefits—long-term economic restructuring—will take years. Trump bets voters will endure the hardship, but Americans aren’t known for patience and may vote them out instead."
I think this is absolutely the case. If he gets quick results, he's golden. But if this plan is something that unfolds over more than six months, a year at most, then I think he'll lose support.
I'm a little surprised at the assumption that this is something that only the very rich will be concerned about because only they have heavy stock market buy in. Something like 60 percent of Americans have some investment in mutual funds or direct stock ownership. Others have IRAs or pensions that will see some effect if this plays out badly.
Trump surprises people, I'll give him that. Maybe this will turn out well.
The reverse is, "Every silver lining has its cloud." We find that with every well-intentioned piece of legislation, left and right..
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"I'm a little surprised at the assumption that this is something that only the very rich will be concerned about because only they have heavy stock market buy in."
Those who own little or no stock have jobs, many with big corporations with falling stocks. If the current stock crash is NOT transitory (which seems likely), then those corporations will start restructuring to try to pump up the stock price: dropping or selling some lines of business, cutting personnel (the good old 10% no-pain cut, to start), reducing inventories where that applies, and finally cutting dividends.
The stock market may not be the economy, but a stock market crash is a great way to crash an economy. Dow Jones down almost 4% now.
Which stock correction in your lifetime was not a great buying opportunity?
True enough, but people always worry this is the big one.
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