Wait, I thought Trump and his ilk LOVED mother Russia?
Who is gonna remind Trump that it’s his people that wear red?
Every accusation is a conf…, ah fuck it, we all know.
No, see MAGA is American Red! The Dummycrats are Commie Crimson. If you can’t tell the difference, then I have to wonder where your loyalties lie…
I just saw a commercial for “TrumpyBear”. A hideous stuffed creature with a bad combover.
Only $70. And you get a Certificate of Gullibility.
They’re still hawking that plush nightmare? I haven’t seen that ad in a few years.
(I would make a “only you can prevent dumpster fires” joke, but it’s the wrong way 'round.)
Just what I dropped in to say. I used to see those ads in the wee hours on cable channels that I watched when I couldn’t sleep. But it’s been quite a while. Must have found a couple of crates of these monstrosities in the back room of the warehouse.
Or, they are taking orders and payment, with no intention of ever shipping squat.
Quite a crowd Donnie! Sorry about your SAD attendance figures. Next time tell your crappy AI intern to tone down the room.
Kind of weird about your buddy, Putin, being a commie though.
I see that economists are finally taking Trump to task about not knowing the first thing about tariffs (mainly that they are paid by people and companies in the country imposing them, not by the countries they’re levied against).
My question is – where were these people years ago when Trump was saying that China was paying the US billions because of the tariffs he rose against China? I don’t remember even a mention of how stupid this was in the news back than.
I have come to the conclusion that there is just too much stupid to even try to untangle at this point.
I do remember it back then. Probably got drowned out by everything else going on during the run-up to the 2020 election. Like the response to COVID and injecting ourselves with bleach. Stuff like that.
Also its a bit more salient now that inflation is the main bugaboo in the public’s perception of the economy.
I thought the whole point of tariffs was to raise the price of imported goods so that items manufactured in America would become more competitive, and lead to more manufacturing jobs. So, in theory, it’s not as if shoes, and cars, and electronics will all be made just as before, but we’ll start making them in America to avoid the tariffs. The goal is to avoid the tariffs, not pay them forever. That people are arguing over who actually pays seems to miss the point.
Which includes Trump, of course. That he is saying tariffs aren’t paid by the recipient consumers tells me he’s forgotten why he wanted them in the first place; if, indeed, he ever knew.
I bet you a dollar* Donald NEVER knew how tariffs work.
Ten to one he just thinks talking about it makes him sound important and smart.
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*Not really, as we’re not allowed to bet here.
It’s not so much how they work, as to what the hopeful consequence of imposing them will be. On any kind of nuts-and-bolts level, I don’t know how they work. Is there a guy from the government standing at the pier holding the keys to the crane until the ship’s captain hands him a check for all the cargo on board, and then they start unloading?
How tariffs are collected, and who ultimately pays them, is irrelevant to their purpose of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. If even Trump has forgotten that, it just shows how little he knows, or cares, about the policies he proposes.
Yes, I agree. Practically speaking, most US administrations have not imposed tariffs as a means of bringing manufacture of a particular product back to US soil, because for most products, the price of making it here is so high as to be detrimental to the national economy. (Mostly due to labor costs.)
So they don’t say ‘we’ll put a tariff on highlighter pens that will make the China-made ones people now buy at $2 each cost $5 each’ because that would a) anger voters, and b) NOT result in US-made highlighter pens because making them here would cost $5.08 each and thus would be an unprofitable enterprise.
Donald will just go ahead and make highlighter pens cost $5 each. Because if he gets in (and acquires the power to impose tariffs) he will never be facing voters again.* So he won’t care how angry he makes people.
.
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*either because he’s term-limited, or because he doesn’t plan to ever leave office voluntarily.
Are you arguing that if manufacturing jobs come back, that Americas manufacturing costs will come down to what foreign countries pay? That’s not going to happen.
The reason things made in foreign countries are cheaper is that workforces aren’t paid nearly the same amount, and US legislation for safety and such aren’t in effect. That’s why the jobs went overseas to begin with.
All that applying tarriffs to imported goods will do is make Amercans pay more, either for American made goods or foreign made goods. Prices will be higher, not lower. There’s no future point where prices from American-made goods will significantly drop again, certainly not to levels competitive to the foreign costs without tarriffs.
Even if it brings back jobs, prices will be higher.
He never really knew (take that Wharton!).
He sees tariffs the same way he sees everything else - fundamentally through the lens of a grift.
It’s a variation on “they’ll pay for the wall” only now it’s “they’ll pay our budget for us”. Only it won’t. At least with a wall, there was a semi-cogent train of thought.
The idea that he’s such a genius that no other country figured out it could charge tariffs instead of taxing its own citizens is one only he could have. Most narcissists are at least intelligent enough to pause and say, “wait, I must be missing something here if nobody else has tried it in the history of the world”.
Of course. There’s probably a very interesting debate to be had about tariffs, what their impacts would be, and how they might change global manufacturing. The discussion of who actually pays the tariffs is a hijack of that debate. That Donald Trump is participating in the hijack tells me he’s forgotten why he wanted tariffs in the first place.
Personally, I’ve always wondered if the U.S. could mandate that factories which produce goods that are exported to the U.S. be required to follow U.S. standards for worker safety and environmental regulations. Conforming to those standards would probably raise their costs, and make them less competitive against U.S. companies, but wouldn’t actually be a tariff. As things are now, we (the U.S.) are, in a sense, importing shoes and electronics, and exporting worker injuries and polution to those same places.