Ryanair threatens to cancel $33B purchase from Boeing if Trump’s tariffs affect the sales price:
The front loading was a major contributor. Imports count against GDP and their increase wiped out ~five points of growth in private investment and personal consumption.
Trump today: Trump: What people don’t understand is.. the country eats the tariff, the company eats the tariff and it’s not passed along at all… China is eating the tariffs
This is good, I didn’t need to study Econ 1.01 at all … enlightenment, gratification … but if it’s not the tariffs, what other factor is driving the prices up and causing the shelves to empty?
Obama Biden.
I was going to say ‘Bingo,’ with a link.
“The economy shrank. First time in three years. People are pointing to the tariff policy. There are people looking at their 401ks that are worried. What do you tell them? Is this going to work?” Fox News’ Bret Baier asked Vance in a new interview.
“So the first thing is, when you talk about the economy this is Joe Biden’s economy and we inherited $2 trillion of debt, the highest peace time deficits in American history, a $1.2 trillion trade deficit — which fundamentally means we’re not making enough of our stuff,” said Vance.
Except… The few links I can find by selecting the quotes in either paragraph point to the Occupy Democrats Facebook post I copied this from.
An e-bike maker, E-Cells, is going out of business due to the tariffs:
It’s a legitimate quote. Here are several sources for the exchange.
Because it’s undoubtedly true that Trump is a profoundly stupid man, for a long time I believed that he sincerely believed this. That he genuinely thought that ‘the other country’ paid the tariffs.
I’ve come to reject that view. It seems much more likely that Trump repeats this because otherwise he has no cover.
‘China pays and we profit’ makes a good excuse for continuing tariffs---------even if no educated person believes it’s true.
And Trump NEEDS an excuse for doing tariffs, because he’s not yet powerful enough to just instruct his minions to do things he wants—he still needs some plausible deniability to dupe the chumps.
And he wants to do tariffs: they mean both money in his account (from the bribes paid for exemptions) and bowing and scraping from those applying for those exemptions. He wants both.
No one wants to get inside trumps head.
However, 'spoding the established trade environment means that every trade agreement becomes crony capitalism. That is, for enough bit coin to DJT, one can carve out an exception to the tariffs.
capitalism without rails or rule of law is nasty for everyone except the broligarchs.
Without a doubt.
But millions of Americans were ‘okay’ with guaranteeing their own economic misery, if it meant daily videos of brown people being dragged screaming onto deportation flights. That was a deal they were happy to make.
Loan payment delinquency numbers:
So far, the only notable jumps appear to be Student Loans and Credit Card debt.
I’d assume that it’s due to inflation during the Biden administration (largely caused by the Ukraine war, Covid, and the delayed impact of Trump Tariffs 1.0) that credit card debt has already been on the rise but the last quarter does seem to have thrown that up a notch and the numbers are approaching those seen following the 2009 bubble.
The cause of the jump in student loan debt is…well, people are expected to actually pay their debts again.
As a percentage of debt, the two that are moving towards higher delinquency appear to be on the smaller side in terms of total dollars but, I’d assume, at some point the pains from dealing with those two could start to hamper payments to the others.
Looking at the image further…
My tea-leaf read of the lines would say that, plausibly, the Biden student loan forgiveness initiatives may have helped people to improve their credit card and auto loan debts. We see those numbers start to improve when student loans drop off a cliff.
Since we see credit card debt pick up with student loan restoration, it may be that inflationary impacts haven’t started to hit yet and, rather, we’re just seeing a rebound effect from previous-administration market manipulation.
We’ll need to wait another 3 months for the next report of this style. Back to watching employment numbers and the CPI…
Today, Trump is “suggesting” that Walmart absorb the tariff costs.
Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain. Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS,” and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!
That is the kind of thing they accuse Democrats of doing.
I think I should double post this here, and not only in the “Clusterfuck continues” thread:
To be fair, it is not only the clusterfucker’s fault, it has been a long time coming. But the time to anounce the downgrading of the US’ credit rating is now, under his watch (I use this term very loosely, bear wih me) so here you are (gift link):
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/business/us-credit-downgrade-moodys.html?unlocked_article_code=1.H08.Vbgf.duoqLDqtlaKF&smid=url-share
And the article ends:
“Years of dysfunction, debt ceiling debacles and fiscal imprudence have brought us to this outcome,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the accounting firm RSM. He warned that “anything financed in both the public and private sector will now be more expensive.”
Yep, it’s part of the process of the U.S. dollar no longer being the reserve currency. There’s been pressure on the currency for years, but now that Trump has kicked out the supports, nothing will bring that status back. Long term, it will mean higher interest rates for anyone borrowing in dollars, compared to the past. It will also mean the federal deficit will have to be reduced with increased taxes.
The credit rating was downgraded first in 2011 after a government shutdown due to a budget impasse, and several times since then.
I disagree: only once since then. And now is the third time, once for each big credit rating firm in the world:
The downgrade from Moody’s means that each of the three major credit rating agencies no longer gives the United States its best rating. Fitch downgraded the United States in 2023, citing fiscal concerns, and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country in 2011.
And I wrote it was not only trump’s fault. He’s just making the worst out of a bad situation. How do you say kudos in Russian?
And if Walmart fails to raise prices of imports, there will be no reason to buy American, giving us the Trump Recession.
Neither Trump nor his defenders appear to have noticed one little discrepancy: what’s up with WALMART having to deal with the tariff costs?!? Wasn’t CHINA (and other nations supplying our imports) that was going to pay the tariffs?!?!?
Trump gets to escape explaining how his over-and-over-and-over-again promises— that the nations from which we bought the goods would pay the tariffs—turned out to be hollow lies.
He shouldn’t get to escape that.