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

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

some light reading on what the USA was doing a century ago and two centuries ago.

2 hours ago, Liam S said:

I don’t even see this as a right wing policy. A lot of traditional conservatives against it. I also don’t think it’s really been tried before at this level in this way

What happens when you just import everything and export nothing? Less jobs, less tax, just pure consumers and the country loses power and money. This is the only way to reverse this situation. Crypto barely taken a hit.

Think of it like this.

Americans are big consumers. The biggest by far especially considering their population. Yet the world is benefitting from this more than America. This isn’t so much a trade war but trade blackmail. America has all the power in the situation because they’re the biggest consumers. They have money too.

But ultimately America has been losing too many jobs and Americans getting poorer while the debt increases by trillions every year.

So this is turning America consumerism on its head.

Will an economist say it’s better Apple get blackmailed into making everything in the states? No. They’ll say it’s better for everyone, the economy that Apple makes these phones in China and Americans benefits because they get cheaper phones. TOTAL BS

Slave labor for one

Americans lose jobs

America gets less tax

Apple taking a big hit on their stock price isn’t a bug or a tragedy it’s by design. They’re supposed to. Now they can either pay the US tariffs in which America profits or avoid tariffs and relocate into the US in which jobs are created in the US and Americans profit and America profits from the double extra revenue.

Will prices go up? Why should they? Apple already makes incredible profits. If they lose some of that so what? Will the markets be better for Apple? Maybe not? Will that technically be bad for the economy? Who cares. Overall America and Americans benefit. That’s why I don’t listen to economists on this issue.

They are focused on what is best for the economy or prices or markets. Not what makes sense with the bigger picture.

Best case scenario America raises trillions in extra revenue via tax/tariffs/jobs and can then reduce taxes or give Americans payouts.

There is so much horseshit in there. Do you know how long it takes to set up manufacturing facilities? Manufacturing is a low skilled job. You can practically automate full lines these days and only need an engineer to make sure it runs efficiently. If any new manufacturer opens up, it’s going to be limited.

I don’t mean to be rude either, but what industry do you work in for a career? Your idea about Apple not raising their prices is complete nonsense. Shareholders hold all the power and get used to good yields. Often they influence policy from companies and of course want a good RIO. Let’s take your Apple example. If an iPhone costs £1000 now and the full end to end manufacturing comes to the US, the iPhone is not going to cost £1000 anymore as the Labour is more expensive. So what happens? Samsung spot an opportunity and eat in to Apple marketshare for one. The company invests in technology to reduce headcount or they pass the increase on to consumers. Consumers then buy less product. Not rocket science.

Countries have been trading for years and always will do because you can’t have the access to the demand consumers want and need. You reference power but I’m not sure what power America are going to have in the medium term.

They tried doing rhat with tariffs acrually in 1930, Liam, in responde to the Wall Street Crash. It ... didn't work and made everything worse.

4 hours ago, Liam S said:

Best case scenario America raises trillions in extra revenue via tax/tariffs/jobs and can then reduce taxes or give Americans payouts.

How naive are you to think this is REMOTELY likely???

That might just be the single most economically illiterate piece of shit I’ve read on this website and we’ve seen some utter nonsense posted on Brexit but that. That takes the biscuit.

I think LiamS might actually be less economically literate than the trump administration and I wasn’t even sure it was possible to be somehow even less informed than the moulding kumquat

5 hours ago, Silas said:

That might just be the single most economically illiterate piece of shit I’ve read on this website and we’ve seen some utter nonsense posted on Brexit but that. That takes the biscuit.

I think LiamS might actually be less economically literate than the trump administration and I wasn’t even sure it was possible to be somehow even less informed than the moulding kumquat

Its just above your comprehension quite honestly.

Look at this. These people are upset about Nike losing 10 billion market cap.

Why do Nike have factories in Vietnam? Slave labor. What do Nike do with their money? Oh here’s a semi popular athlete here have 70 million, here’s another have 80 million oh here’s a really popular athlete have 400 million. They just throw money away to people who are already earning hundreds of millions in their lifetime on the backs of slave labor while America loses tax and jobs and this is why the gap between rich and poor continues to grow.

You make the tariffs big enough that you either get that money back through tariffs or you force them back into the US. Then of course these midwit over-educated economists will say oh but now every bodies clothes will have to be much more expensive WRONG they will have to stop spending billions giving everyone crazy contracts instead as competition means price rises will just leave their customers going elsewhere. This is how you bring back wealth, keep the middle class in existence and keep a country thriving and powerful.

Silas doesn’t have a clue.

if I were president this is EXACTLY what I’d be doing too. If being on the side of slave labor, obscene profits for a very few and a dwindling of the middle class so there is only rich and poor is the supposed smart side then I’m glad I’m not on it. This is why the UK is doomed. Produces less and less to the point of almost nothing, everything outsourced then these geniuses will be like let’s just increase immigration because these guys work longer hours for less money then boom the wealth inequality grows and suddenly you can’t afford to look after your own citizens.

Trump saw America has all the power look at this

America are by far the biggest consumers. So companies and countries can’t just team up with China or cut America out. They all need and rely on American consumerism and now instead of just a select few profiting the whole country will.

The standard of living for millions of people in the US, Europe and the UK has been decimated for awhile now and it was only getting worse. Maybe it’s a privilege thing. Maybe some people grew up well off and are too selfish to see how life is for a lot of other people. Ultimately this is why people like Trump won in the first place and why there is a big shift in who poor people vote for. I said a long time ago the biggest transfer of wealth would be crypto which made millions of people rich who never would have been but these kind of tariffs could be next not in terms of making people rich but in transferring wealth from a select few to millions

LOL k

I work in indirect taxes for a Big 4 firm, I’ve forgotten more about tariffs than you’ll ever be able to comprehend but go off hun, I do enjoy a chuckle on my commute

The credit you give a man who believed immigrants were eating pets and Kamala Harris was running so that she could give immigrant prisoners trans surgeries is a little astounding at times Liam.

Ever heard of Occam's Razor?

Liam, I'll be honest here while I understand the wider your points you're making about corporate greed and extreme capitalism, your theory lacks economic understanding. There's a reason Markets are tanking across the Globe, you have people who are far more expertise in this stuff than any of us who look at the long term outlook. For starters your point about manufacturing. The US unemployment rate is something like 3 or 4% right now. If you force companies to bring their manufacturing back to the US, who exactly do you think it going to do all these jobs? You'll need immigrants to perform the activities as your products just won't get made otherwise.

The US (like the UK) is a services economy. Manufacturing work is low skilled work and lower paid. It's not the 1930s anymore where in plants you have 150 people running a manufacturing line. This idea that companies will bring their manufacturing back and make products cheaper is complete fantasy. Yes, I totally agree corporations and shareholders are greedy. You only have to look at the mess or the Water companies in the UK to see this. The theory should be shareholders invest back in the infrastructure, but what often happens is the dividend increases so that people keep their money in.

The stock markets continue crashing. Biggest daily fall for the FTSE 100 since the pandemic. Yet again, another huge load of value wiped off. No one does well out of this outside of the disaster capitalists waiting to buy the dip, especially not ordinary people.

I don't even get Liam's example. Nike's factories in Vietnam aren't going to change their strategy off of this, they'll just sell more to Europe or whereever else, and perhaps a bit less to the US at higher prices. Their advertising budget doesn't come into it, though they might cut back on it if the US is a less lucrative market.

You can't swan around and claim it's solving the inequalities of global capitalism when the evidence for that is speculative and it is something beyond the power of even the US president to solve with such a crude strategy like tariffs, and it's not even his stated aim, his stated aims are dumb nationalism, so reading into him beyond that is not worth it.

Though one should note that Vietnam is apparently on the path to negotiating zero tariffs with the White House, causing Nike's shares in particular to jump back up, but that's not a win for tariffs being good policy, that's a win for Trump doing 'I'll threaten a bad thing until you give me deference, and we'll slowly work our way back to what we had before' which is just a waste of time for all involved except his ego.

First sign of him doing what he did with Canada/Mexico last month at least, we're back on this stupid train.

I mean literally the only thing to benefit from dropping a bomb on the global economy is his ego - it's a very self-destructive way to encourage public grovelling from businesses and diplomacy to get things back to square 1.

There will be much rowing back but it will all be presented as getting concessions.

3 hours ago, Iz 🌟 said:

The stock markets continue crashing. Biggest daily fall for the FTSE 100 since the pandemic. Yet again, another huge load of value wiped off. No one does well out of this outside of the disaster capitalists waiting to buy the dip, especially not ordinary people.

I don't even get Liam's example. Nike's factories in Vietnam aren't going to change their strategy off of this, they'll just sell more to Europe or whereever else, and perhaps a bit less to the US at higher prices. Their advertising budget doesn't come into it, though they might cut back on it if the US is a less lucrative market.

You can't swan around and claim it's solving the inequalities of global capitalism when the evidence for that is speculative and it is something beyond the power of even the US president to solve with such a crude strategy like tariffs, and it's not even his stated aim, his stated aims are dumb nationalism, so reading into him beyond that is not worth it.

Crashing even further and people moving it Cash. But tariffs are good hey. Sure fire way to a recession and companies deciding to reduce headcount.

Suspect over the weekend there will be lots of rowing back.

People all over the place are acting like the world is ending because their stocks went down 9% well how about all those people with masters degrees who applied for 2000 jobs in the last year and heard back from two? What about the guy who got an opioid addiction because his job got outsourced and now he can’t buy his kids clothes? People take out then put back in. Stocks go up and down. Even if jobs are lost readjusting ultimately more are created long term. I don’t need more Temu’s or Aliexpresses. Nobody does. Cheap garbage it’s societal decay that these things even exist. We need western manufacturing and booming middle classes restored

^^

If there’s one thing that current administration shown over and over again, is not giving a single damn f***s about middle class people!!!

How naive of you to think that all what is happening right now is for the good of middle class people :lol:

37 minutes ago, Liam S said:

People all over the place are acting like the world is ending because their stocks went down 9% well how about all those people with masters degrees who applied for 2000 jobs in the last year and heard back from two? What about the guy who got an opioid addiction because his job got outsourced and now he can’t buy his kids clothes? People take out then put back in. Stocks go up and down. Even if jobs are lost readjusting ultimately more are created long term. I don’t need more Temu’s or Aliexpresses. Nobody does. Cheap garbage it’s societal decay that these things even exist. We need western manufacturing and booming middle classes restored

And this isn't going to do that.

You should take a class in critical thinking. I have no idea how you can simultaneously believe every word out of Trump's mouth is gospel truth and yet also doubt the verdict on Lucy Letby because, it COULD be wrong.

How come you never apply that same critical perspective to what the Trump administration claims?

34 minutes ago, Liam S said:

People all over the place are acting like the world is ending because their stocks went down 9% well how about all those people with masters degrees who applied for 2000 jobs in the last year and heard back from two? What about the guy who got an opioid addiction because his job got outsourced and now he can’t buy his kids clothes? People take out then put back in. Stocks go up and down. Even if jobs are lost readjusting ultimately more are created long term. I don’t need more Temu’s or Aliexpresses. Nobody does. Cheap garbage it’s societal decay that these things even exist. We need western manufacturing and booming middle classes restored

The issue is your ideology lacks depth. Where are you finding all these people for manufacturing when unemployment is very low? Your dismissal of the stock market.. again, what do you think is going to happen if stocks don't rise or show growth? Companies make redunancies and lay offs. To think they are not going to do is naive. Likewise you want manufacturing back, but what about those businesses who fully rely on exporting to other Markets who will be forced out? If manufactruing comes back to the US you will see costs go up and little job creation. You don't need people to run warehouses and lines.. especially not if you're starting afresh.

Entirely nonsensical whataboutism that is divorced from reality. Honestly guys it’s not even worth the time

The Wall Street bros are panicking

The markets down bigger than previous days today so far. Seems like reality has set in that these tariffs will probably go ahead. I imagine the American markets will be similar so today will be a big test of Trump can ignore the noise and stick with the plan