Let’s go breakers! We’re almost there.
“Trump Says China Tariff Is at Least 145%” – New York Times.
This is on all Chinese imports to the US.
Doesn’t an astronomical tariff like this effectively shut down trade with our second-largest source of imported goods?
Yes, I think that is exactly what he wants. He genuinely believes that trade is bad in itself, and particularly when it causes a “deficit”, that is, when you pay money to get the things you want / you need.
This is bonkers, of course, and all economists (except the imaginary Mr. Ron Vara) have told him so, but he knows more than all the experts in the world. So he does what he has always said. Increase tariffs. The more the better. The most beautiful word in the dictionary.
This and raping women is the only coherent thing he has done all his life. Coherent in the sense that he does what he said he will do.
The very apt analogy I saw was:
Trump [slams dick in car door]
Global Markets [tank]
Trump [ opens car door ]
MAGA [ Masterful gambit, sir! ]
I’ve not seen that repeated anywhere else, and there is a Reuters article that the Japanese Finance Minister told the Diet yesterday that the Japanese government is not planning to sell US T-bills.
Trump just asked the Supreme Court to let him fire Jerome Powell, the last adult in the room
Well, Gasparino the friendly economics ghost, should explain more, but that Being FOX, I think the will just had that Japan angle fade away..
Now in other reports I have seen that bonds were an issue, so it was not just Japan,
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/did-treasury-bond-markets-cause-trump-tariff-blink
The Dow still closed over 4,000 points below less than 2 months ago.
Not looking good today.
Did Fox News bring back the ticker yesterday?
Well, China is holding over 750 billion in Treasury bonds and Xi isn’t facing midterm elections next year ( or any year).
Mr. Trump, in your own words, I don’t think you have the cards.
American labor is 10x more expensive than Chinese. A 900% tariff is what you need to get customers to buy American. And that’s assuming that Americans made the sorts of products that China does. As we don’t, we would still need to buy from China, until we found an alternate vendor (which would probably also not be American).
Yes, its tough to bluff your hand in Texas Holdem when they not only have just as deep of pockets as you do, they also have their hand in your pocket and you can do nothing about it.
And it’s WAY easier to impose short term hardships on your citizenry when you don’t have to worry about electoral consequences.
Never believe something until it has been officially denied.
Just for historical context from the German perspective, the phrase to bear in mind is “Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten”, that is, nobody has the intention to build a wall. It was declared by Walter Ulbricht (the head of state in the GDR at the time, officially I believe President of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the German Democratic Republic) in a press conference on the 15th of june 1961. The wall was built on 13th of august the same year, not even two months later. Some revisionists still argue that he did not lie, as the did not yet have green light from Moscow for the building of the wall. But he had obviously thought of it and had made plans in his head. Intention? Pfft!
If Japan sells those US T-Bills in two months time they sure will have an excuse just as good if not better. And someone I know will whinge it is so unfair!
There is a video (1 minute 37 seconds) of that press conference:
In Germany it is famous now, but if went totally unnoticed when it happened.
ETA, the German Title “Historische Fakes” is most unfortunate, really bad fake (pun intended) German. The word fake does not mean the video is fake, but what Ulbricht said was a lie. I have a professional cringe feeling.
I’ve been seeing multiple interviews on TV news shows of small business owners who are staring ruin in the face because of what the tariffs are doing/will do to their supply chains. And no, they can’t just turn to American manufacturing to substitute, for all the reasons we’ve already seen stated in this and other threads on the Dope and elsewhere.
Canadian federal govt is paying for billboard adverts in red states: “Tariffs are a tax on your fuel bill”.
I have seen them on the highways near Pittsburgh.
As linked elsewhere, there’s now a tariff exemption for smartphones and computers.
Two thoughts:
- Forget the stock ticker, we need a tariff update chyron, with Trump’s stupid face next to it. This is changing by the hour.
- I wonder how I’d play this, if I were Xi… Because my thought would be: America is trying to hoard certain items prior to putting in blanket tariffs (for realsies this time), and therefore he should restrict number of sales of certain items? But of course, these tariffs are going to cause pain everywhere, so Xi could simply grab some popcorn and watch the Trump admin clown around with further exemptions.