whiterock said:
ATL Bear said:
whiterock said:
Redbrickbear said:
whiterock said:
Mothra said:
whiterock said:
Robert Wilson said:
Mothra said:
boognish_bear said:
Not sure if this is accurate across the board or not… Comments seemed to indicate so
So, when I first saw the list, I thought it was actually a reciprocal tariff based on the tariffs imposed by other countries, and I thought it might not be so bad.
However, if this is truly the formula Trump used - which is based apparently on trade deficits - this is not a reciprocal tariff but instead a tariff that tries to get manufacturing to come back to the US - something that is likely never gonna happen in any large numbers.
In short, the Trump admin is misleading the American people by labeling this a reciprocal tariff. That's just a wholly false statement.
Such an entirely ridiculous and unnecessary move, and it's going to come back to bite him. Kiss the midterms goodbye. We are going to lose the House and the Senate. So dumb.
I hope Republicans who didn't skip Economics 101 will block this deal.
I'm with you. I could get on board with reciprocal tariffs. If we are instead enacting huge one sided tariffs just to counteract trade deficits, that's insane.
muddled thinking. the purpose of tariffs is to address a trade deficit, which will benefit domestic manufacturers and jobs. Whether they are reciprocal or not depends on the nature of the abuse happening, e.g. look at the way China relocates production & transshipments to avoid existing trade restrictions. This is particularly true when it comes to trade subsidies (which many countries do) and non-tariff barriers to trade like the EU VAT.
if you are going to pick this fight you have to smack hard coming out of the gate, to effectively deny entry to our market unless concessions are made. Your opponent, who has investments in an existing supply chain has to make hard decisions about whether he is going to abandon the supply chain or open up his own market to your goods. Sure, the wealthier countries will have at least theoretical options to consider, but it will take years for them to restructure and in the meantime they will incur more damage to their economy than they will inflict on ours (by virtue of having a trade surplus with us).
our position is quite strong and concessions from trade partners are a matter of when not if.
So, in other words, this is about damaging other countries' economies more than helping our own. It will take years to change supply chain and manufacturing base, but at least over the course of the next two years we can damage their economies worse than they can damage ours. In the meantime, the American people take it in the shorts.
Such a silly strategy.
The silliest strategy of all is doing nothing and accepting the status quo, which is what you are advocating.
There are a lot of people in American who see nothing wrong with the status quo
They walk out of their expensive homes in their expensive neighborhoods and see nothing wrong with the current spoils system or how the economic pie is divided up
They are going to learn (by the ballot box or the bullet) how wrong they are
The red light is flashing...and the American electorate is signaling (potentially dangerously) revolutionary impulses
[America's newly elected president may be a demagogue and a populist, but what he is above all is a revolutionary.
In hoping to make America great again, Donald Trump promises to introduce a fundamental, comprehensive and rapid transformation of American political, economic, social and cultural institutions. Such a massive change is what we mean by the term "revolution."]
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4976570-america-has-elected-a-revolutionary-will-he-succeed/
The aversion to tariffs is a foremost luxury belief of the upper classes. THEIR careers are not impacted by a flood of cheap foreign goods……
You simpletons are absolute economic idiots. Making the working and middle class pay for their own economic demise through higher prices is one of the most evil ironies I've ever heard of. The jobs of the future are not manufacturing jobs, and using the false premise of trade deficits as "cheating" to push the job fairy tale is dtraight devious.
If you understood why we have income tax vs tariffs today, it was instituted specifically so the working class didn't have to carry so much of the tax burden, and it could be transferred more to the wealthy.
This joker went to war with the world on trade all at the same time. Straight insanity!
Recto-cranial inversion there. We went to an income tax because we were a manufacturing powerhouse running consistent trade surpluses (which limits tax base if one depends on tariffs). But we've run consistently trade deficits since the 1970's (which creates the converse problem). So cutting payroll taxes and using tariffs to offset directly benefits WORKING CLASSES and fosters more manufacturing jobs (which pay more than flipping burgers and doing ride-share).
Doesn't matter how smart one is if one works so hard to remain obtuse on macroeconomics. Note Sargon' reference in my prior post about the distribution of GDP being overweighted in finance and real estate. Do you seriously mean to suggest that it's a good idea to become a nation whose business model is rent-seeking? That's one consequence of continuing the globalist model.
The U.S. once relied on tariffs before the income tax. But this wasn't because tariffs were ideal, it was because the federal government was smaller, and the economy was simpler. As industrialization advanced and our economy grew more complex, tariffs proved inadequate and regressive, and that's precisely why we moved toward income taxation. Not because of trade surpluses, but because we needed a more stable, equitable, and modern revenue base.
Suggesting that we should now go backward by cutting payroll taxes and replace that revenue with consumption taxes on imported goods isn't reform, it's regression wrapped in populist language. Tariffs, again, are paid by consumers, not foreign governments. And low and middle income households spend a much higher proportion of their income on goods, especially imported ones, than taxes. So replacing income or payroll taxes with tariffs doesn't shift the burden upward it shifts it downward, onto the very working-class households you claim to protect.
You point out that our economy is too weighted toward finance and real estate type industries, which we may agree that we need more strategic manufacturing, but where we part ways is in your diagnosis of the cause and your prescription for the cure. The shift in GDP toward those types of industries isn't because of trade liberalization, it's because of underinvestment in physical infrastructure, education, and worker training, along with poor regulatory policy that has redirected capital away from it. Slapping tariffs on foreign goods doesn't fix that. It doesn't rebuild domestic capacity, doesn't retrain workers, and doesn't rebalance capital allocation. It just raises prices and introduces more friction.
And no, manufacturing jobs aren't inherently "better" than service sector jobs unless they're backed by strong productivity, innovation, and export potential. A subsidized job assembling parts in an inefficient supply chain isn't more dignified than a job in logistics, IT, or energy. The goal shouldn't be to revive 1955, it should be to build an economy with sustainable employment opportunities, not obsolescence.
If you want to cut payroll taxes to help the working class, fine let's have that discussion, although it compounds the issue with the entitlements bankrupting us. But replacing them with tariffs, the most regressive, inefficient, and distortive form of taxation, is not the answer.
So no, this isn't recto-cranial inversion. It's just a refusal to buy into the idea that tariffs are anything more than a political gimmick dressed up as economic strategy.
