What do you think about about Trump’s tariffs? Will the tariffs be as bad as the Smoot-Hawley Act, which is blamed for deepening the Great Depression?
What do you think about about Trump’s tariffs? Will the tariffs be as bad as the Smoot-Hawley Act, which is blamed for deepening the Great Depression?
Comments
Looks like about half the amount that these countries have been penalizing us with tariffs for years.
In short no. The situation has been blown out of proportion. The US has been under other countries tariffs that are similar to the Smoot-Hawley Act, and then on top of that, those nations have been requesting assistance, that would come from the US. Some of those tariffs imposed upon the US, have been going on, for close to thirty years or more. At some point before all this, it probably should have been asked, ‘why?’, before it got to this point.
Stupid on top of stupid.
It’s too hard to say definitively what the impact would be.
The new average tariff rate exceeds the Smoot Hawley tariff rate. If we see widespread retaliatory measures then it could have even greater impact.
Though the SH tariff was enacted under worse economic conditions at home and abroad. Trump mercifully was handed a great economy, so there’s more room to fall.
Dumb the usa is a bigger economy but if hes gonna run a global tariff they arent that big that they can take on the entire world by themselves
Being that he is applying the Tariffs so universally, countries are likely going to band together and try to cut the US out of their supply chain. This will have a long lasting impact.
Everything he does is bad for the country.
They are a huge mistake, but given allowing him to buy an election was also a huge mistake it’s par for the course. 23% of voters put a dictator with no political experience in charge for the second time. He will tank the economy just like he did the first time.
I’m no economist but I know tarrifs get passed to the middle and low class. So buckle up. Pay attention to the stock market for the stores you shop at. If their stock drop that is what makes or breaks the corporations next move.
Too early to tell
We have to give him a chance, and trust that he and his team know what they’re doing.
My issue right now is the low key global American boycott. Basically if you have a choice to buy not American, everyone is not buying American. I know people who’s international sales are down 90+ percent, so the tariffs don’t matter so much as the fact that no one is buying anything anymore.
I expect that to get worse.
One thing is probably true. The distrust for America after this round of nonsense may not dissipate for a generation. There is always the possibility of another Trump around the corner.
Yes.
It would be bad enough without the rest of the destruction he did to our government and support structures.
Now people will be jobless with high inflation and zero support.
Great Depression II — souplines with no soup.
Just starving people.
The biggest fear is that we have already been through Trump brinksmanship before. The first time it was fearful due to the uncertainty. But everyone now knows how he operates. Instead of appeasing the boy who cries wolf all the time, they will choose to avoid it altogether.
You will start seeing the US not being invited to trade partnerships. These countries know it will be hard but if they cannot rely on US stability they will find someone else.
This disunity is going to lead to disaster. The power vacuum is going to cause a conflict and I hope the disillusioned youth who voted for this chaos is ready to pay their dues.
It will be worse. There will be flip flopping, which will mean that even the benefit you’re supposed to get, more industrial investment in the US, won’t happen because nobody knows how long the tariffs will even last.
It will be so bad. Nobody trusts the US now. We are all busy making deals with other nations. I’m sure he will do more stupid things like actually invade a neighbouring country. On a personal note I’m also so sick of this administration’s bullying and meddling with other nations affairs. Same for the billionaires wanting to be trillionaires. Also sick about hearing it constantly. It’s very much making me avoid supporting US products and not wanting to visit the country. US has become the most terrible ally we can’t count on.
The tariffs aren’t a financial tool. They’re using them to bully countries and companies…
I think tariffs can make sense, but they’re often used for the wrong reasons or sold in oversimplified ways. The reality is, the U.S. (and a lot of other countries) has let critical industries slip away manufacturing, microchips, even some medical supplies because we got addicted to cheap labor overseas. So now we’re in this weird spot where we talk about national security and independence, but we’re completely dependent on countries like China for essentials.
So yeah, putting some tariffs in place to encourage companies to bring back production or invest locally? That makes sense to me. We shouldn’t be this fragile every time a supply chain hiccup happens. But it only works if there’s an actual plan behind it. Tariffs aren’t magic. If they’re just slapped on without fixing the deeper problems like lack of investment in American workers, or outdated infrastructure they’re just a tax that gets passed onto people buying groceries and appliances.
Also, I think people forget that other countries use tariffs and subsidies all the time. They protect their industries. They play hardball. The U.S. acting like it has to be the good guy in global trade while everyone else does whatever they want is just dumb. Sometimes you’ve got to play the game to not get played.
But I also think politicians on both sides sometimes use tariffs more as political theater than smart policy. It’s easy to say “we’re protecting American jobs” and harder to actually rebuild a functioning, competitive economy. So I’m cautiously pro-tariff, if it’s part of a long-term, smart strategy not just a headline grab.
I swear the fucking God, being a Historian is like becoming Cassandra. No one listens to you and then we all die. 😤
Who knows? Letting an chatbot calculate imaginary “trade balance correcting” rates and challenging the whole world at once? Could work! Let’s throw the dice with entire American economy!
Someone explain to me why one person has so much power? We saw this with McConnell blocking any legislation coming to the Senate for even debate. We saw him stop the appointment of a SC justice and the conviction of trump, who was obviously guilty. If we survive the next few years as a country, we can no longer depend upon the honor of people elected to power. Safeguards need to be implemented to prevent this. What good does it do to elect people who have power only as designated by the senior members, where everyone is expected to fall in line?
Economies weren’t as intertwined going into the 30’s as they are now. This will be significantly worse.
Trump is trying to solve a problem that only exists in his mind using numbers he pulled from his ass. Of course this will harm us all. Bigly.
Some countries will capitulate, because they have no effective choice, but they’ll probably take more robust steps to protect their economy in future, whereas previously they might have relied on the stability of the United States as a trading partner. America will have less leverage over them in future.
Some countries will just hit back, because they can, and because they know America’s dependencies – short and longer term – don’t match the rhetoric.
Everyone will look at America dimly and realise that they can’t rely on it, both in terms of business but also as a “safe pair of hands” on the world stage. That has far reaching consequences.
Aside from anything it’s incredible that Trump and his supporters think they companies would commit billions of manufacturing effort (which would take years anyway, but that’s by the by) when he is completely unreliable. They could break ground and the day afterwards tariffs get removed on a whim. That’s before you even get into the details of differences in labour cost, etc.
It will take a generation or more to recover from felon47. If we do.
He’s creating a financial disaster, allowing emergency powers to be enacted. While reasonable countries cut out the US from trade, he’ll align us with Russia and North Korea. The new axis of evil featuring despot dictators.
Funny Trump is using a proven method to destroy our economy. Almost like it’s on purpose.
Far worse. What Trump has not processed is the reality of Globalization in nearly every sector. for decades the economies of the world grew in interdependencies. COVID showed this reality with for example FORD unable to complete a pickup truck build because of several small ticket components being unavailable from countries who were at different states of “return to work”. And this wasn’t just chips (none of which came from the high end fabs they are funding in the Chips Act).
This seems to me to be a serious Trump blind spot. No surprise. His history is in Real Estate – a pretty simple business where projects have very low interdependencies. Its capital, site and contractors. Day at the beach.
Don’t get me wrong – there was absolutely a need to deal with some countries specifically. If a country is dumping or monopolizing or involved with intellectual property theft and industrial espionage – yes – you must mitigate. But if a country has a minor tariff on US competitors to protect a very fragile business sector that employs a lot of people charging a fair market rate – then you have to respect that necessity. The US has done the same for Harley Davidson, etc etc. If a country blockades your imports while freely shipping their exports that compete with the same imports – you have every right to say – no – this needs to even out more. Lets say we cap your exports at the number of imports you allow. But we all know the US is not squeaky clean here. No one is.
It will be worse.
He placed all these tarrifs without creating incentives to move the industries back to the US. Instead the other countries will make a trade agreement that excludes the US. Almost 100% of consumer electronics have foreign parts. That doesn’t just hurt the consumers but also businesses as well. The cost of supporting your business infrastructure and employees just went up.
Gonna take decades to recover if the tariffs are lifted one day, but probably never gonna make it to the level it was prior. The damage is significant. The decisions are unhinged. The relationships with allies are badly dented.
US people will suffer a lot. There will be no real incentive to ramp up domestic production unless a new even lower class is established, which is a major cut on the standard of living in general. A move towards it needs major education cuts and greatly trapped ppl.
All I hope for is that the upcoming desperation driven extremenism doesnt result into a lot of bloodshed.
I see no winners in the equasion.
I do not think we are heading to a depression but we are certainly heading towards recession as the economy has failed two straight GDP quarters…the market has high volatility, political leadership had become disillusioned and misaligned, unemployment is rising, consumer financial confidence is low, cash on hand for the middle class is strained, cost of goods remains high, disposable income is disappearing. Many are to blame, half the population for becoming narrow minded and voting selfishly as opposed to the greater good of the country, and a political opposition that is distracted and forced a non elected unpopular leader to be their political head, and it backfired tremendously. We are so far from progress as we are stuck for another 4 years with a disastrous start to the 2nd Trump campaign. It will take the greater majority of the current MAGA to realize they possibly made a mistake for anything to change because the current Democratic leadership is weak
Probably, say hello to your new overlords. Better learn to speak mandarin
Yes. No doubt about it. Congress could actually do their jobs and stop this desecration. They voted for Trump to invoke tariffs w/o a vote from them. They can damn well vote to rescind their first vote and begin to hold this administration responsible for the damage they have done.
People who are acting like there is some grand plan behind this, NO, Trump is just stupid. That’s it. This whole administration is incompetent.
Occam’s Razor.
It will definitely be as bad or worse.
There’s a way to make tariffs work for your country without ruining your relationships with other countries.
This is not the way. At all.
This is way is built on two ideas
The US is in the most superior position to rest of the world to the point where its completely indispensable.
The only people that matter are the rich robber barons and everyone else is dispensable.
The first idea is only based on someone truly believing in America as a country and power. But this is definitely not the case. Only brainwashed idiots think Trump believes this.
The second one is 100% the case and everyone but the trumplings knows this.
All I gotta ask is that every other country has tariffs, why isn’t bad for them? Also before this I remember seeing US had some of the lowest tariffs?
This is clear economic policy incompetence.
This will be worse. Hoover was an honest man and a mediocre president who was wrong about economic policy. Trump is an utterly corrupt man and a terrible president who is disastrously wrong about economic policy.
Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?
I think this will still cause problems throughout the world but the USA was more of a manufacturing super power and was more essential. Now the USA mostly is a services economy so other countries will just deal with it and probably be ok while the USA implodes into a million little pieces.
Even if the tarrifs are reversed, there will be long lasting impacts. The tarrifs were implemented by executive order not through congress. Businesses will not shift manufacturing to the US or permanently alter supply chains when tarrifs can be implemented or reversed on a whim. Only when stability is seen will business make long lasting changes to operations.
I love how an improvised scene in a John Hughes movie is the reason we know this will suck
Worse, because we live in a global economy and we are trying to grab our ball and go home. The problem is that the other team members have their own balls and can continue playing without us. This isolationist mentality has never worked for us. We need smart, capable, informed and intelligent people in government. We have to restore respect for all kinds of expertise, from the farmers, carpenters, auto workers and food workers, to the techs, doctors, lawyers, and scientists and yes, government workers who know their stuff. Dissing people because of their work eventually backfires.
Working in manufacturing, and potentially these tariffs could rival Smoot-Hawley. In the 1920s, we didn’t rely on international supply chains for certain elements and materials, now we do. There are no US alternative suppliers to support, they were all packed up and shifted overseas in the 80s and 90s.
Well, after those tariffs Democrats controlled the Senate for all but four of the following 50 years and the House for all but four of the following 60 years so there could be a silver lining.
Step 1 – Impose tariffs to destroy economy.
Step 2 – Blame Biden when economy implodes.
Step 3 – Walk back tariffs he imposed to cause this mess.
Step 4 – Watch markets return from rock bottom and declare victory.
His supporters will of course lap up this BS and somehow see no fault in anything done by their idol.
“You dun messed up A-merica!”
Yes. Just…yes
If the goal is to bring back manufacturing, it’s stupid. Those jobs suck. Period. It’s low wage, low skill back-breaking work. We also do not have workers to do those jobs.
High end manufacturing in the US is already at an all time high. But that’s highly automated, so not so many jobs there.
We don’t need “jobs”, we need money. These tariffs are drawing money out of the country rapidly. We are totally fucked.
Many many moons ago Nancy suggested them and nobody batted an eye.
The tariffs are part of a plan to redo the economic world order, back to a psuedo- Bretten Woods model with a weaker dollar The problem is the plan REQUIRES other countries to trust the US to maintain economic stability and protect the global trade interest. Trump has eroded that trust with his arrogance towards Canada, etc.
They’re stupid. Plain and simple.
Yeah, I get the idea that manufacturing should be encouraged in the US, but most of those jobs will likely be filled by robots. Companies don’t want to hire expensive American workers; it why manufacturing jobs went overseas in the first place. There was probably a better way to address this problem by working something out with these companies than through having an international trade war.
Also, some products are never going to be made in the US no matter how much tariffs are thrown around and all that does is hurt the US consumer.
Sometimes the consumer just prefers the overseas products because the US alternative sucks or just doesn’t exist.
I think it’s obvious that all this is going to lead to a recession now. Things will get more expensive across the board and consumer spending will chill. For how long, I don’t know. Maybe it will somehow magically all work out, but if not, I’m sure they’ll just blame the libs for it all.
And the cherry on top is that this has soured international relations and vastly eroded trust in the US. That will take generations to undo.
Seriously, ANOTHER one of these posts? From an account that’s 9 days old, posting a softball rage-bait-esque question, that’s going to fly to the top of /r/Askreddit. But, nope, nothing weird about that!
/s
Stop asking the question.
Start discussing the facts.
Fact: The tariffs are a bad idea. How can we fight back?
Trump is a fucking moron, and his administration is a circus of unqualified, incompetent, self serving, and drunk/high MAGA monkeys.
That idiotic Captain Kangaroo prop chart Trump was holding up on “Liberation Day” Show & Tell time?
The MAGA math used to calculate the “reciprocal tariff” for each country amounts to, basically, numerology.
The trade deficit (the $ amount difference between what we buy from a country minus what we sell), divided by the number of imports, divided by 2.
The fuck is this math?
Why not also use the formula:
The letters in C-H-I-N-A represent 3-8-9-14-1.
3+8+9+14+1 = 35
3+5 = 8
35 / 8 = 4.375
The General Tso’s lunch special at Hunan Taste is #9
9 x 4.375 = 39%
Trump’s tariffs are to be summed up in one word..,SHIT!
If he sticks with them their effect will result in something at least as bad as the stagflation of the late 70s/early 80s and possibly as bad as the great depression.
The things that may save us are a) he’s got the attention span of a gnat on meth so might move on to something else. b) Rs lose the house and Congress leveraged him into dropping them. c) the ruling class decides that a shit economy doesn’t benefit them as much as they thought it would and forces him to reverse them.
(raises arms gestures as if to say “look around”)
First off: Tariffs are dumb in general. Trump’s tariffs in particular are dumb. Trump is dumb. None of this is good.
There are very few problems tariffs theoretically solve that aren’t better solved by some other method.
THAT SAID
It won’t be as bad as Smoot-Hawley. The economy is much more advanced and can “absorb” a lot more than it used to. We may still be headed for a depression, but these tariffs are the final step in a multi-step clusterfuck.
But more importantly, there is zero chance these tariffs stick around.
What Trump is doing is right out of The Art Of The Deal. He has created a position of strength: he has the ability to raise tariffs, so he did, and now he has the upper hand on negotiations. Now, any nation he talks with he can get something from them in return for lowering tariffs. His whole “short term pain for long term gain” narrative is based on this. He knows that other nations will say they won’t negotiate because they don’t need the US’s trade, but they, in fact, do; the US is large enough to outlast pretty much everyone else.
So people leveling criticism that this isn’t how you encourage domestic growth aren’t correct, because that’s not the goal. The goal is to be a master negotiator and cut the best deal.
What sucks is that this will probably be at least partially successful from an optics perspective.
…
This is, of course, assuming that Trump has a plan, which I am pretty sure he doesn’t. Or it’s some half-thought notion scribbled down on a used napkin somewhere. This whole on-again, off-again policy just means people assume that there will be tariffs and act accordingly, which negates the entire point of the process.
Oh, and also, the whole “separation of powers” thing he’s largely circumventing.
So, yes, this is all bad, very very bad, but I feel like people are missing the point of why he’s doing this in the first place. The only silver lining is that 1) high tariffs aren’t the actual goal and 2) this assumes he’s actually going to stick to whatever his dipshit plan is. I’m not optimistic.
Trump will destroy US relations for a generation. He is playing a game where he doesn’t understand the rules.
They will be worse and ineffective.. no one wants these manufacturing jobs he is so fond of; by the time any factories move back, AI and robots will take most of those jobs; and EVERYTHING is going to be more exoensive
Our economy is more sensitive to global disruptions than it was during the 1930’s. These tariffs are much higher than we saw during Smoot-Hawley. It will be worse.
He could have given several years for American manufacturing to plan.
It will be so much worse if Congress doesn’t act or if he doesn’t undo them very very soon.
A 9 day old account asking low effort questions?
That’s funny.
I watch this cocktail channel on YouTube called How to Drink, and the host recently did two videos — the favorite drinks of the 10 “best presidents” (as named by Siena College) and the 10 “worst presidents.” The latter video came out yesterday.
He talked about how much Herbert Hoover sucked as a president and the Smoot-Hawley act, which he named the SECOND worst tariffs and as he was talking, text came up on screen that said “Hold my Diet Coke.” I was dying.