The problem was that oligarchs didn’t like paying taxes on their wealth. So they wanted to shift all the taxes off of their income and capital gains, and transfer it to tariffs. That’s how it used to be a couple centuries ago before the USA moved to an income tax. But the USA has grown a great deal since then, and our economy is far more complex, and we are no longer nearly so isolationist. Now that plan will cripple our service economy and destroy a great deal of our working class’ ability to provide for themselves.
The cynical person would say Trump’s economic plan is trying to cause a recession and economy crash, because the oligarchs around him benefit from a crash as they can buy up all the struggling companies and emerge owning even more than they currently do.
Another alternative explanation is that Trump and his rich friends want to restructure the tax system so they pay even less and Trump needs to replace those sources of tax with tarrifs, which are essentially a tax that disproportinately affects lower and middle class consumers.
Trump might actually genuinely believe that tarrifs will cause a manufactoring boom in the US and “correct” the trade deficit which he seems to think is a bad thing because he believes it is better for a company to produce and export more physical goods than it imports (he believes this because he doesn’t understand the topic)
>If Tariffs Are The Answer … What Was The Problem?
There wasn’t a problem. They imagined the problem.
>…I’ve completely lost track of what was the problem that tariff’s were supposed to fix?
You might be confused because you are looking for a bad thing happening to Americans. That isn’t how Trumpists think.
Instead, they object to good things happening to others and they are willing to make bad things happen to Americans to prevent good things from happening to others.
(Much in the same way that they are willing to endure lousy healthcare for themselves if they believe it will prevent some Black person — or “other” — from getting better healthcare.)
Like in reality or like in an alternate reality when they’re actually a good idea?
If it’s the latter the two things I have heard is basically assuring that we can produce certain items necessary to maintain national security or as a temporary measure to help build an industry that requires a lot of upfront costs but is profitable over the long term.
The companies and consumers doing the importing don’t seem to have complained about it much but the politician who thinks you need to flash ID to buy bread says so, so, y’know
Some Republicans seem to think that this will somehow result in more stuff made in the US, more stuff bought in the US that is American-made/by American companies and manufacturers, more jobs created in the US, better for American businesses, incentivizes companies to open businesses here from other countries, stop sending jobs overseas, etc.
Might help some industries a bit, but mostly will not end well. Pretty sure there’s a lot of stuff people here don’t know how to make and don’t have materials to make, more layoffs and business closings will happen, and…I just dissolved my business for unrelated reasons, but from what I’ve experienced American-made stuff is more expensive…in part because American workers want/need to be paid more money. One of the reasons we order stuff from China to sell here is better profit margins and we can actually get people to pay the prices we set for that stuff vs American-made stuff. I still have American-made crap sitting up unbought, even though the product pages got views and likes. Kind of Hands-On Business Experience 101 and tells you a bit about Trump’s business experience. Regardless, we’re all going to pay more for almost everything.
They tend to speak out of both sides of their mouth
Sometimes they’ll simply point out that other countries have tariffs on us. Ideally no tariffs would exist in either direction. But jacking up tariffs on other countries tends to just provoke them to jack up tariffs in a tit for tat fashion rather than lower them. So tariffs don’t really work for the whole “actually I just want to lower trade barriers” argument
Then there’s the other argument of “actually we should be pursuing economic autarky and only consuming domestic manufacturing” which is just stupid economically illiterate anti-capitalism. Capitalism works best with maximizing competition and free trade helps maximize competition. But that flies in the face of economic nationalism, and the modern right fucking loves nationalism
Plus there’s the pro worker argument, which, as above, is economically illiterate, with tariffs increasing the cost of living. But the right have been making gains among the working class anyway and the working class (and people in general) are embracing a post truth go-with-your-gut-not-experts approach, so they think tariffs will help the working class
There have been changes to the US economy, which have resulted in an increase in income inequality. There have also been changes that have made it extremely difficult for people to afford basics. The end result is that instead of the pattern where each generation is better off than the previous one, it appears that starting with the millennials things are getting worse or at least appear to be getting worse
Alongside that we have seen increased globalization. The United States has a highly educated and and wealthy developed nation has shifted away from manufacturing and in addition manufacturing is more automated so it requires less jobs.
One of the issues here is that it is easy to understand that somebody lost a job or that the types of jobs your parents or grandparents had are no longer available to you. But it is hard to see that everything you buy is cheaper so it is very easy to say that globalization has caused us to lose a bunch of really great jobs.
Very effective messaging from the right and extremely poor messaging from the left have helped sell a message that the reason you can’t buy a home and get married and have kids is that globalization and immigrants have taken that away from you.
So Donald Trump who has severe issues with understanding how the world works combined with motivations to lie in order to maintain his power is able to sell many Americans on the idea that tariffs and mass deportations will solve all their problems.
According to Trump, the problem is that Americans are rich enough to buy products made in other countries by workers paid low enough that they cannot buy American products in return.
This is called a “trade deficit”. Trump wants to fix this so that Americans instead produce products at labor rates so low that they cannot afford products made outside the country.
I am not joking. This is explicitly what he identified as the problem and what his current tariff attempts to fix.
Seriously though, Trump has some issue with the trade deficit. He thinks balanced trade or a trade surplus is better for some reason. My thought on the matter is I don’t think he really understands what a trade deficit is. And his “reciprocal” tariffs don’t appear to be a reciprocation of these countries’ tariffs on our exports but rather some half-baked theory to get the trade balance back to neutral. I think what he’s more likely to do is cause a recession and get congress to limit his ability to set tariffs.
It’s fucking obvious that this is intentionally crashing the stock market. Take from that what you will, but it’s clear as day to me that they want to ruin America.
I dunno man. Every time I try to ask Trump supporters what was so bad in their lives they needed to burn down the whole economy I don’t get an answer. Most of the time they are actually financially comfortable, and a lot of time they will admit they were making more money at the end of Biden’s term than they were before!
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Amongst all the liberation day stuff, I’ve completely lost track of what was the problem that tariff’s were supposed to fix?
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The problem was that oligarchs didn’t like paying taxes on their wealth. So they wanted to shift all the taxes off of their income and capital gains, and transfer it to tariffs. That’s how it used to be a couple centuries ago before the USA moved to an income tax. But the USA has grown a great deal since then, and our economy is far more complex, and we are no longer nearly so isolationist. Now that plan will cripple our service economy and destroy a great deal of our working class’ ability to provide for themselves.
Depends on who you ask.
The cynical person would say Trump’s economic plan is trying to cause a recession and economy crash, because the oligarchs around him benefit from a crash as they can buy up all the struggling companies and emerge owning even more than they currently do.
Another alternative explanation is that Trump and his rich friends want to restructure the tax system so they pay even less and Trump needs to replace those sources of tax with tarrifs, which are essentially a tax that disproportinately affects lower and middle class consumers.
Trump might actually genuinely believe that tarrifs will cause a manufactoring boom in the US and “correct” the trade deficit which he seems to think is a bad thing because he believes it is better for a company to produce and export more physical goods than it imports (he believes this because he doesn’t understand the topic)
>If Tariffs Are The Answer … What Was The Problem?
There wasn’t a problem. They imagined the problem.
>…I’ve completely lost track of what was the problem that tariff’s were supposed to fix?
You might be confused because you are looking for a bad thing happening to Americans. That isn’t how Trumpists think.
Instead, they object to good things happening to others and they are willing to make bad things happen to Americans to prevent good things from happening to others.
(Much in the same way that they are willing to endure lousy healthcare for themselves if they believe it will prevent some Black person — or “other” — from getting better healthcare.)
Like in reality or like in an alternate reality when they’re actually a good idea?
If it’s the latter the two things I have heard is basically assuring that we can produce certain items necessary to maintain national security or as a temporary measure to help build an industry that requires a lot of upfront costs but is profitable over the long term.
Trumps daddy didn’t love him enough.
Supposedly we were getting overcharged on imports
The companies and consumers doing the importing don’t seem to have complained about it much but the politician who thinks you need to flash ID to buy bread says so, so, y’know
Some Republicans seem to think that this will somehow result in more stuff made in the US, more stuff bought in the US that is American-made/by American companies and manufacturers, more jobs created in the US, better for American businesses, incentivizes companies to open businesses here from other countries, stop sending jobs overseas, etc.
Might help some industries a bit, but mostly will not end well. Pretty sure there’s a lot of stuff people here don’t know how to make and don’t have materials to make, more layoffs and business closings will happen, and…I just dissolved my business for unrelated reasons, but from what I’ve experienced American-made stuff is more expensive…in part because American workers want/need to be paid more money. One of the reasons we order stuff from China to sell here is better profit margins and we can actually get people to pay the prices we set for that stuff vs American-made stuff. I still have American-made crap sitting up unbought, even though the product pages got views and likes. Kind of Hands-On Business Experience 101 and tells you a bit about Trump’s business experience. Regardless, we’re all going to pay more for almost everything.
The problem was there was too much trade with countries that are not Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Cuba.
“What is: How to destroy the US economy?”
They tend to speak out of both sides of their mouth
Sometimes they’ll simply point out that other countries have tariffs on us. Ideally no tariffs would exist in either direction. But jacking up tariffs on other countries tends to just provoke them to jack up tariffs in a tit for tat fashion rather than lower them. So tariffs don’t really work for the whole “actually I just want to lower trade barriers” argument
Then there’s the other argument of “actually we should be pursuing economic autarky and only consuming domestic manufacturing” which is just stupid economically illiterate anti-capitalism. Capitalism works best with maximizing competition and free trade helps maximize competition. But that flies in the face of economic nationalism, and the modern right fucking loves nationalism
Plus there’s the pro worker argument, which, as above, is economically illiterate, with tariffs increasing the cost of living. But the right have been making gains among the working class anyway and the working class (and people in general) are embracing a post truth go-with-your-gut-not-experts approach, so they think tariffs will help the working class
The economy was doing too well. They needed to crash it so they could blame it on Biden.
This is the wrong question. It assumes Trump and his administration are competent and rational actors. They are not.
They don’t know what they are doing and I am assuming they are using LLM’s to make most of their plans.
Why else would they place a 10% tariff on Heard Island and McDonald Islands? These are islands whos only inhabitants are penguins.
Wealthy people weren’t being legally granted royal status.
There have been changes to the US economy, which have resulted in an increase in income inequality. There have also been changes that have made it extremely difficult for people to afford basics. The end result is that instead of the pattern where each generation is better off than the previous one, it appears that starting with the millennials things are getting worse or at least appear to be getting worse
Alongside that we have seen increased globalization. The United States has a highly educated and and wealthy developed nation has shifted away from manufacturing and in addition manufacturing is more automated so it requires less jobs.
One of the issues here is that it is easy to understand that somebody lost a job or that the types of jobs your parents or grandparents had are no longer available to you. But it is hard to see that everything you buy is cheaper so it is very easy to say that globalization has caused us to lose a bunch of really great jobs.
Very effective messaging from the right and extremely poor messaging from the left have helped sell a message that the reason you can’t buy a home and get married and have kids is that globalization and immigrants have taken that away from you.
So Donald Trump who has severe issues with understanding how the world works combined with motivations to lie in order to maintain his power is able to sell many Americans on the idea that tariffs and mass deportations will solve all their problems.
The problem was Trump didn’t have direct control over the American financial system.
He wants the power of the purse in his hands so he can steal from the purse whenever he wants.
According to Trump, the problem is that Americans are rich enough to buy products made in other countries by workers paid low enough that they cannot buy American products in return.
This is called a “trade deficit”. Trump wants to fix this so that Americans instead produce products at labor rates so low that they cannot afford products made outside the country.
I am not joking. This is explicitly what he identified as the problem and what his current tariff attempts to fix.
Stock market was too high?
Seriously though, Trump has some issue with the trade deficit. He thinks balanced trade or a trade surplus is better for some reason. My thought on the matter is I don’t think he really understands what a trade deficit is. And his “reciprocal” tariffs don’t appear to be a reciprocation of these countries’ tariffs on our exports but rather some half-baked theory to get the trade balance back to neutral. I think what he’s more likely to do is cause a recession and get congress to limit his ability to set tariffs.
It’s fucking obvious that this is intentionally crashing the stock market. Take from that what you will, but it’s clear as day to me that they want to ruin America.
The problem was that Republicans’ fantasies weren’t being sufficiently validated by everyone else.
Wealth
I dunno man. Every time I try to ask Trump supporters what was so bad in their lives they needed to burn down the whole economy I don’t get an answer. Most of the time they are actually financially comfortable, and a lot of time they will admit they were making more money at the end of Biden’s term than they were before!