whiterock said:
FLBear5630 said:
whiterock said:
Assassin said:
boognish_bear said:
If Trump can find a way to fully or partially eliminate personal income tax, that would be huge
that is the explicit policy - to raise more money from tariffs and less from income taxes.
But, that only works if imports remain at current levels. It is a balance. Look at the Deloitte analysis for next five years. Imports are reducing. Government spending as part of economy, reducing. Real business investing, reducing. Consumer spending, reducing. Real GDP, reducing. Unemployment, increasing. CPI, down .5%. (That is a positive).
Does this look like a scenario for less taxes?
Source is Deloitte, this is a reputable source. These guys are not clowns or Mother Jones. This is baseline, there is also a up scenario and down scenario. I thought baseline was best for conversation, keep it bias free (as possible).
read that article again. note the word "scenario." (meaning a projection, not current developments).
The economy seems to be slowing slowing, which would be expected. You can't stop the kind of deficit spending we've engaged in the last 5 years and NOT have the economy slow. Trump has already addressed the investment portion. We are now approaching $10T in announced foreign investments. Sure, not all of that will happen in 2025 or even 2026, but we don't need all of it to happen in that timeframe, just enough to offset the reduction in government spending (approx $1T). Should not be a problem, given that the amount we need to hit the books over the next 18 months is a very small percentage of the total.
Consumer spending is not, in fact, declining.....yet (although it likely will do so soon).
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/the-state-of-the-us-consumer
Unemployment is driven by new entrants, not job losses.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/04/economy/us-jobs-report-march-2025/index.html
Fed has reduced growth projections, but is still projecting economic expansion for 2025-2027.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcprojtabl20250319.htm
Reduction in CPI is actually a sign of a slowing economy. Lower gas prices? a slowing economy uses less gas. and so on and so on. You will see that same dynamic on trade.....trade deficit will narrow as an economy slows. To the extent a trade deficit is structural (and ours explicitly is), a yawning trade deficit is a leading indicator of coming expansion (businesses stocking up inventory to meet growing demand).
Again.....avoid the temptation to let microeconomic challenges cloud the view of the macroeconomic situation. Trump is making macroeconomic changes. He's changing the landscape, the laws of gravity that dictate the way things will flow. By definition, existing supply chains cannot cope with those changes. THAT IS THE POINT! 70+ years ago, sovereign power chose to engage in globalism as a response to a rising USSR. Because that response was effective, it is no longer useful = it achieved its objective, ergo its costs (trade deficits) are no longer offset by advantages. So sovereign power (belatedly) defined new objectives - decouple from China and bring a greater percentage of supply chains back home.
note that Apple has announced it will move all of its US-oriented iPhone production out of China by 2026, relocating most of it to India. That, my friend, is tariffs at work. Trade policy always serves national security policy. Trump created macroeconomic conditions that will drain China of most of its US-oriented production over the next decade. SOME of that production will come home.
#winning
The problem you keep having is confusing government budget deficits and trade deficits as if their resolution is equivalent and resolution approaches are the same. It's mind boggling how you've leaned into this misguided concept.
The trade deficit isn't a wound. It's a byproduct of American strength in our currency, our markets, our consumer base, and our role as the global economic anchor.
You keep trying to close the trade deficit like it's a budget shortfall, but you're missing the entire point of modern economics. We don't measure success by exports minus imports. We measure it by productivity, innovation, capital investment, and long term competitiveness.
Trade deficits are a signal not a sin. And mistaking them for failure is how you end up designing policies that punish your own people to chase a number that never needed fixing. Even your India reference only solved a targeted geo-strategic shift, that began during the Biden admin btw, that could have been specifically targeted instead of attacking the world putting everyone on the defensive and more likely to find/shift to alternative solutions, or worse depress global demand which is manifesting as we speak.
And to help assess the scope of the problem you are fixated on, here's real data. We can certainly attack more strategic production opportunities here, but they are not tariff driven.
Trump is chasing a political agenda while sacrificing our broader strategic advantages.
