pic.twitter.com/MAkwXVYBqQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2025

In 2008, the Democratic Party had a favorability rating above 60%…

Today, it’s 29%.

This was the Democratic Party in 2008:pic.twitter.com/FBESrreGp9

— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) March 16, 2025

The very loud spokesman of the Houthis announces they have launched an all-out attack against the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry D. Truman.

Knowing his relationship with truthful statements, he’s likely to soon announce that the entire strike group was sunk

H/t @MarinaMedvin pic.twitter.com/bt2JKQRFBB

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 17, 2025

Jacques Strap said:

---

Gotta love that while Mark Kelly was trading in his Tesla, Elon Musk was flying into space to save Kelly’s fellow astronauts who were abandoned by Joe Biden’s autopen.

— Kate Hyde (@KateHydeNY) March 16, 2025

---

Amazing how so many people believe whatever lunacy legacy media tells them.

Yet here is Musk rescuing our astronauts.

boognish_bear said:

---

In 2008, the Democratic Party had a favorability rating above 60%…

Today, it’s 29%.

This was the Democratic Party in 2008:pic.twitter.com/FBESrreGp9

— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) March 16, 2025

---

This should is prime example number one on how the Media gaslights people….to this very day they are talking about the "radicalization of the Republican Party"

When of course any regular person can see it's the Democrats who have become radicalized and moved far to the Left and their activist class

Looking at the Dems of 2005 and today is staggering

boognish_bear said:

---

The very loud spokesman of the Houthis announces they have launched an all-out attack against the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry D. Truman.

Knowing his relationship with truthful statements, he’s likely to soon announce that the entire strike group was sunk

H/t @MarinaMedvin pic.twitter.com/bt2JKQRFBB

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 17, 2025

---

Time for the Israeli solution. Every time the General from Iran talked, he blew up 24 hours later. Pretty soon, we stopped hearing Iran saber rattling.

FLBear5630 said:

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whiterock said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

historian said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

Leavitt: Tariffs are a tax hike on foreign countries and a tax cut for the American people

Reporter: Have you ever paid a tariff? I have. They don’t get charged on foreign countries

Leavitt: I think it’s insulting that you are trying test my knowledge on economics pic.twitter.com/usJyrfEZFP

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 11, 2025

---

She is wrong. In the final analysis, the consumer pays all tariffs. The companies who buy the products and then sell them here in America pass on the increased costs through higher prices. It's inevitable.

It's all political theater.

---

same is true for taxes.

the point of tariffs is to increase the cost of imported goods, to make them less competitive against domestically produced goods. And looming tariffs can have significant impact on investment decisions (as we have seen numerous times to our advantage in the last few weeks). Manufacturers can on longer count on reflexive US aversion to tariffs. The only way to hedge against that risk is to invest in MANUFACTURING in the USA (to ensure access to the US market).

Nothing new here. We did that in the 70s with Japanese automakers, and now most Japanese brand vehicles sold here are made here. Trump is merely trying to force that same dynamic on other sectors now.

---

70% of Japanese vehicles sold in America are imported.

---

you have it exactly backwards.
https://www.allamericanmade.com/where-are-toyotas-made/

---

That didn't say what you thought it did. Unless Mexico and Canada are part of the U.S.

---

You apparently missed this sentence.
"An estimated 69 percent of all the Japanese vehicles made for the US were made in the United States."

Now, you could drill down a little further and note another fact which mitigates the first - vehicles made in the USA (including by US companies) have up to 25% imported content. In fact, that is a more important datum. Direct importation of 100% foreign content items is not exactly representative of the total. in no small part, that's because of what I have referred to (and you have ignored) over and over - countries typically will demand on-shore production when trade generates excessive demands. countries typically do not want to offshore entire industries. They want the jobs created at home. There are numbers of reasons for that, to include pressure from political constituencies as well as national security concerns (the ability to mobilize for war). I say again, trade policy ALWAYS serves national security policy.

All those Japanese manufacturing plants are here because of trade agreements negotiated in the 1970's and 1980's. Trump is merely doing what Reagan did = demanding a greater percentage of on-shore production of goods sold in the USA.

---

It's an incorrect stat, probably because the article was focused on Toyota. 70% are manufactured in North America not America. Japan imports nearly 30% of their cars sold in America from Mexico into the U.S., with some like Mazda and others highly import heavy. Toyota happens to be the best performer in U.S. production. But as if to prove my macro point, even Toyota with its best performance, produced 25,000 jobs over that long horizon of negotiation. Yet we're applying tariffs that impact millions of US employees, and companies will adjust staffing to profitability.

---

uh, not quite.

Fed stats say unit sales of vehicles have hovered around 17m per year.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA
Other stats indicate, unit sales of imported vehicles are about 7m per year.
https://www.usimportdata.com/blogs/top-us-car-imports-by-country-in-2024
That's about a 60-40 ratio (varying from year to year).

The point of the tariffs is to force companies to move greater percentages of their production to the US market. No one wants to be shut out of the US market. They will more likely increase production here to avoid the (higher) cost of tariffs. Several such moves have already been announced. You will see more in the future. Every company wants a stable supply chain, and the best way to ensure that is to move production closer to markets. Wouldn't it be better if that 60-40 split went the other way around?

90% of cars made in Mexico and Canada are exported to USA.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2025/03/13/volkswagen-bmw-make-preparations-tariffs/82375652007/
Why must that be the natural order of things? Does Canada REALLY have dramatically lower costs? (No). Wouldn't it be better if those cars were made here? We do want jobs HERE, don't we? Voters do. that's one reason why many of them voted for Trump......to ignore the nincompoops arguing bad trade policy - that others can tariff us but we can't tariff them.

Note that link cites BMW as planning to absorb tariff costs. Why would they do that?
Heard a radio report that VW will do the same.
Why would they do that?
(perhaps due to subsidies from their own governments......)
Doesn't that undercut the argument that tariffs are direct cost burdens on consumers?
Doesn't that highlight the level the degree to which subsidy and VAT et al of our trading partners disadvantage US producers?

among the key concepts you are ignoring is this: trade is about JOBS (not about cheap goods). Governments negotiate trade agreement to promote job growth in their countries and protect the ones they already have.

"The only sustainable growth is export-led growth." If I heard my professors say that once, I heard it a thousand times. That's what Trump is trying to get to. How do you get to export-led growth if you do not engage in the same kinds of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade employed by your trading partners? Sure, everybody reducing everything to zero is preferred, but that's not terribly realistic. Reality is everybody does everything they can to protect/promote domestic employment. Except the USA. Until now.....

In a cold war context, tolerating trade imbalance had strategic benefits - tying allies to us economically. Without that Cold War context, tolerating trade imbalance is imbecility defined.

---

Federal Stats are good info now? Thought created by incompetent workers that were secretly pushing Biden agenda.

Can we trust Govt information or not?

---

that's the data we have. But you are correct to note that other data has been manipulated for political effect, so we can take all data with a grain of salt.

What we do not need data to know is......export-led growth is the only sustainable growth.
Every other country understands that and executes policy accordingly. It is way beyond time for us to do the same.

---

I do agree, except sort of hard to be the largest market in the world AND maintain a positive trade balance. Not saying it can't happen, but sustained?

Someone more versed in macro economics and market economies would need to weigh in on this.

---

Macroeconmics has in common with geopolitics that it is BIG PICTURE. Tectonic plates. Known pressures (which don't change much) pushing in mostly known directions (which can vary a little over time). National-level economics. In pure macro theory, trade balances are managed by currency values. When you run deficits, you are by definition throwing more of your currency into the market than there is demand for. That excess supply causes the value of your currency to decline, which in turn lowers the relative cost of your goods, which makes them more competitive and generates greater demand for them, which pushes your trade balance back toward even. And when you pass even & get to trade surplus, your currency tends to become scarce in the markets, which pushes its price higher, which makes your goods more expensive, which negatively impacts demand for them and pushes you back toward balance. and so on & so on. IF, however, your currency is a reserve currency in the international monetary system, other countries can "influence" the value of your currency by holding greater/lesser amounts of it in their own national reserves, insulating it from supply/demand driven influence on value. In such a situation, you will tend toward trade deficits.....what the textbooks call a "structural trade deficit."

The point of colonialism was self-preservation, to ensure you could go it alone if you had to. It involved managing free trade within a single polity and tightly controlling trade deals with other colonial systems, primarily to protect the core. In that regard, a multi-polar world will in a lot of respects look like a colonial world, without monolithic polity. We are a pole. China is a pole. Europe is a pole. That's 75% of world GDP right there. There will be smaller players of note - India, Turkey, Saudi, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, Japan, etc....which will matter in the regional shatterzones. Some of those will have more upside (India, Brazil, etc...) to grow than others (Russia, Turkey, etc..) How polar powers manage conflict in the shatterzone will still be the key to war & peace. Where we are now is this: Neither China nor Russia, each arguably in in decline (albeit at different stages of it), is content with its position in their respective shatterzones. Each is trying to grow its control in shatterzones - Russia invading Ukraine, China taking Belt & Road across mainland Asia and leaning hard on the first island chain. That is threatening to status quo for Europe, USA, and India. Trump is trying to delegate - Nato handles Europe & Africa while the US handles the Pacific and Latin America, and by reaching out to some of the minor powers (notably Saudi, Japan, and India) for alliance. But do we NEED to continue running structural trade deficits to do that? Nope.

Running a structural trade deficit has its advantages. You are a huge market. Everyone wants in. You can demand terms for that. In the Cold War, the price was "ally with us, and bring your dollars to Wall Street." But among the many costs are the loss of manufacturing jobs and growth of service jobs. Nothing wrong with that, per se. but at the end of the day, it is the business model of a Belgium, Switzerland, Singapore, etc.....not a great power. Smaller places have limited resources and must capitalize on the skill of their peoples (in something). But resource rich continental powers are very foolish to use such models over the long-term. It makes them vulnerable to lesser powers. For a period of time? Ok. Let your allies grow their manufacturing base, too.... Get them into position to be able to better protect themselves, be nodes in a network of supply chains rather than everything tied to your core. Sure. But that does not equate to moral imperative to do it forever. At. Some. Point. one must tend to your own house.

A large market of consumers is a valuable asset....there is no one best way to exploit that asset. You have to look at the tectonic plates and the known pressures, and respond accordingly. But at no point in time can you indefinitely allow vital national security industries - agriculture, manufacturing, raw materials - to wither away, because they cannot be resurrected as quickly as your adversaries can build an army. We are at a critical phase in that regard on manufacturing and metals and mining, etc..... no stat should concern us more than the one which says China has 12x the steel production capability we do. Existentially bad. 4.9 alarm fire bad, just not actually aflame yet.

FLBear5630 said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

The very loud spokesman of the Houthis announces they have launched an all-out attack against the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry D. Truman.

Knowing his relationship with truthful statements, he’s likely to soon announce that the entire strike group was sunk

H/t @MarinaMedvin pic.twitter.com/bt2JKQRFBB

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 17, 2025

---

Time for the Israeli solution. Every time the General from Iran talked, he blew up 24 hours later. Pretty soon, we stopped hearing Iran saber rattling.

---

Agreed

Suspect Trump will do something similar.

whiterock said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

historian said:

---

boognish_bear said:

---

Leavitt: Tariffs are a tax hike on foreign countries and a tax cut for the American people

Reporter: Have you ever paid a tariff? I have. They don’t get charged on foreign countries

Leavitt: I think it’s insulting that you are trying test my knowledge on economics pic.twitter.com/usJyrfEZFP

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 11, 2025

---

She is wrong. In the final analysis, the consumer pays all tariffs. The companies who buy the products and then sell them here in America pass on the increased costs through higher prices. It's inevitable.

It's all political theater.

---

same is true for taxes.

the point of tariffs is to increase the cost of imported goods, to make them less competitive against domestically produced goods. And looming tariffs can have significant impact on investment decisions (as we have seen numerous times to our advantage in the last few weeks). Manufacturers can on longer count on reflexive US aversion to tariffs. The only way to hedge against that risk is to invest in MANUFACTURING in the USA (to ensure access to the US market).

Nothing new here. We did that in the 70s with Japanese automakers, and now most Japanese brand vehicles sold here are made here. Trump is merely trying to force that same dynamic on other sectors now.

---

70% of Japanese vehicles sold in America are imported.

---

you have it exactly backwards.
https://www.allamericanmade.com/where-are-toyotas-made/

---

That didn't say what you thought it did. Unless Mexico and Canada are part of the U.S.

---

You apparently missed this sentence.
"An estimated 69 percent of all the Japanese vehicles made for the US were made in the United States."

Now, you could drill down a little further and note another fact which mitigates the first - vehicles made in the USA (including by US companies) have up to 25% imported content. In fact, that is a more important datum. Direct importation of 100% foreign content items is not exactly representative of the total. in no small part, that's because of what I have referred to (and you have ignored) over and over - countries typically will demand on-shore production when trade generates excessive demands. countries typically do not want to offshore entire industries. They want the jobs created at home. There are numbers of reasons for that, to include pressure from political constituencies as well as national security concerns (the ability to mobilize for war). I say again, trade policy ALWAYS serves national security policy.

All those Japanese manufacturing plants are here because of trade agreements negotiated in the 1970's and 1980's. Trump is merely doing what Reagan did = demanding a greater percentage of on-shore production of goods sold in the USA.

---

It's an incorrect stat, probably because the article was focused on Toyota. 70% are manufactured in North America not America. Japan imports nearly 30% of their cars sold in America from Mexico into the U.S., with some like Mazda and others highly import heavy. Toyota happens to be the best performer in U.S. production. But as if to prove my macro point, even Toyota with its best performance, produced 25,000 jobs over that long horizon of negotiation. Yet we're applying tariffs that impact millions of US employees, and companies will adjust staffing to profitability.

---

uh, not quite.

Fed stats say unit sales of vehicles have hovered around 17m per year.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA
Other stats indicate, unit sales of imported vehicles are about 7m per year.
https://www.usimportdata.com/blogs/top-us-car-imports-by-country-in-2024
That's about a 60-40 ratio (varying from year to year).

The point of the tariffs is to force companies to move greater percentages of their production to the US market. No one wants to be shut out of the US market. They will more likely increase production here to avoid the (higher) cost of tariffs. Several such moves have already been announced. You will see more in the future. Every company wants a stable supply chain, and the best way to ensure that is to move production closer to markets. Wouldn't it be better if that 60-40 split went the other way around?

90% of cars made in Mexico and Canada are exported to USA.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2025/03/13/volkswagen-bmw-make-preparations-tariffs/82375652007/
Why must that be the natural order of things? Does Canada REALLY have dramatically lower costs? (No). Wouldn't it be better if those cars were made here? We do want jobs HERE, don't we? Voters do. that's one reason why many of them voted for Trump......to ignore the nincompoops arguing bad trade policy - that others can tariff us but we can't tariff them.

Note that link cites BMW as planning to absorb tariff costs. Why would they do that?
Heard a radio report that VW will do the same.
Why would they do that?
(perhaps due to subsidies from their own governments......)
Doesn't that undercut the argument that tariffs are direct cost burdens on consumers?
Doesn't that highlight the level the degree to which subsidy and VAT et al of our trading partners disadvantage US producers?

among the key concepts you are ignoring is this: trade is about JOBS (not about cheap goods). Governments negotiate trade agreement to promote job growth in their countries and protect the ones they already have.

"The only sustainable growth is export-led growth." If I heard my professors say that once, I heard it a thousand times. That's what Trump is trying to get to. How do you get to export-led growth if you do not engage in the same kinds of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade employed by your trading partners? Sure, everybody reducing everything to zero is preferred, but that's not terribly realistic. Reality is everybody does everything they can to protect/promote domestic employment. Except the USA. Until now.....

In a cold war context, tolerating trade imbalance had strategic benefits - tying allies to us economically. Without that Cold War context, tolerating trade imbalance is imbecility defined.

---

Federal Stats are good info now? Thought created by incompetent workers that were secretly pushing Biden agenda.

Can we trust Govt information or not?

---

that's the data we have. But you are correct to note that other data has been manipulated for political effect, so we can take all data with a grain of salt.

What we do not need data to know is......export-led growth is the only sustainable growth.
Every other country understands that and executes policy accordingly. It is way beyond time for us to do the same.

---

I do agree, except sort of hard to be the largest market in the world AND maintain a positive trade balance. Not saying it can't happen, but sustained?

Someone more versed in macro economics and market economies would need to weigh in on this.

---

Macroeconmics has in common with geopolitics that it is BIG PICTURE. Tectonic plates. Known pressures (which don't change much) pushing in mostly known directions (which can vary a little over time). National-level economics. In pure macro theory, trade balances are managed by currency values. When you run deficits, you are by definition throwing more of your currency into the market than there is demand for. That excess supply causes the value of your currency to decline, which in turn lowers the relative cost of your goods, which makes them more competitive and generates greater demand for them, which pushes your trade balance back toward even. And when you pass even & get to trade surplus, your currency tends to become scarce in the markets, which pushes its price higher, which makes your goods more expensive, which negatively impacts demand for them and pushes you back toward balance. and so on & so on. IF, however, your currency is a reserve currency in the international monetary system, other countries can "influence" the value of your currency by holding greater/lesser amounts of it in their own national reserves, insulating it from supply/demand driven influence on value. In such a situation, you will tend toward trade deficits.....what the textbooks call a "structural trade deficit."

The point of colonialism was self-preservation, to ensure you could go it alone if you had to. It involved managing free trade within a single polity and tightly controlling trade deals with other colonial systems, primarily to protect the core. In that regard, a multi-polar world will in a lot of respects look like a colonial world, without monolithic polity. We are a pole. China is a pole. Europe is a pole. That's 75% of world GDP right there. There will be smaller players of note - India, Turkey, Saudi, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, Japan, etc....which will matter in the regional shatterzones. Some of those will have more upside (India, Brazil, etc...) to grow than others (Russia, Turkey, etc..) How polar powers manage conflict in the shatterzone will still be the key to war & peace. Where we are now is this: Neither China nor Russia, each arguably in in decline (albeit at different stages of it), is content with its position in their respective shatterzones. Each is trying to grow its control in shatterzones - Russia invading Ukraine, China taking Belt & Road across mainland Asia and leaning hard on the first island chain. That is threatening to status quo for Europe, USA, and India. Trump is trying to delegate - Nato handles Europe & Africa while the US handles the Pacific and Latin America, and by reaching out to some of the minor powers (notably Saudi, Japan, and India) for alliance. But do we NEED to continue running structural trade deficits to do that? Nope.

Running a structural trade deficit has its advantages. You are a huge market. Everyone wants in. You can demand terms for that. In the Cold War, the price was "ally with us, and bring your dollars to Wall Street." But among the many costs are the loss of manufacturing jobs and growth of service jobs. Nothing wrong with that, per se. but at the end of the day, it is the business model of a Belgium, Switzerland, Singapore, etc.....not a great power. Smaller places have limited resources and must capitalize on the skill of their peoples (in something). But resource rich continental powers are very foolish to use such models over the long-term. It makes them vulnerable to lesser powers. For a period of time? Ok. Let your allies grow their manufacturing base, too.... Get them into position to be able to better protect themselves, be nodes in a network of supply chains rather than everything tied to your core. Sure. But that does not equate to moral imperative to do it forever. At. Some. Point. one must tend to your own house.

A large market of consumers is a valuable asset....there is no one best way to exploit that asset. You have to look at the tectonic plates and the known pressures, and respond accordingly. But at no point in time can you indefinitely allow vital national security industries - agriculture, manufacturing, raw materials - to wither away, because they cannot be resurrected as quickly as your adversaries can build an army. We are at a critical phase in that regard on manufacturing and metals and mining, etc..... no stat should concern us more than the one which says China has 12x the steel production capability we do. Existentially bad. 4.9 alarm fire bad, just not actually aflame yet.

---

We agree on many points, steel and metals is a big one.

You make a good point, it is not necessarily the deficit it is what areas the deficit is in. A deficit in sneakers and accessories is not as big a deal as it being in steel and fuel. Japan learned that in the 30's with fuel.