My hopium is that tariffs seem to be impacting the rich as well. History has shown that is the trigger for any change to happen. I’m hoping they’re gonna start forcing change and threaten pulling their money from GOP members who continue to support the tariffs.
I don’t buy there’s a grand conspiracy to buy low/sell high because that would mean Trump is capable of well-reasoned thought.
Comments
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
My hopium is that tariffs seem to be impacting the rich as well. History has shown that is the trigger for any change to happen. I’m hoping they’re gonna start forcing change and threaten pulling their money from GOP members who continue to support the tariffs.
I don’t buy there’s a grand conspiracy to buy low/sell high because that would mean Trump is capable of well-reasoned thought.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
No.
The way he’s enacted them guarantees we don’t even get the narrow benefits of tariffs.
Nobody’s going to make big investments in US manufacturing because of tariffs introduced at the whim of a single politician. There’s no reason to suppose they wouldn’t vanish as quickly as they were introduced, and absolutely no reason to believe a future president will continue them.
His tariffs are nothing but a complete loss.
If the rich wanted to stop Trump, they would’ve already done it.
They don’t care.
I’ve been against free trade and globalization for many years. It hurts the working class, benefits the investor class, and outsources the unpleasant things like abusive labor practices and pollution to countries with few regulations. I’m a bit happy that something is being done to shake up the status quo of that system, but I’m deeply skeptical about how we come out the other side of this.
Tariffs and protectionist policy becomes politically toxic. That’s the silver lining
Americans will either finally learn their lesson about the dangerous populist, nationalist, overly nostaligic, anti-trade, anti intellectual mindset that has taken control of their country or the rest of the world will replace America’s role and establish a more stable global order. It’ll also be very easy for historians to write about the decline of America with such a clear event to point to.
It’s going to lead to the Republicans getting slaughtered in the midterms so there’s a silver lining
No, there is no silver lining here.
It’s entirely possible that there will be some benefits, such as certain manufacturing being done in the US on a go forward basis or otherwise it would’ve been done elsewhere. But any of that will be coupled With higher prices and damaged foreign relations. Plus, it’s doubtful that very many companies will bring significant manufacturing back to the US because they probably are going to want to wait out the tariffs and see what happens in the midterms and with the next elections.
There is a silver lining. It helps midterms and it has a chance at bringing MAGA Republicans back to earth. I’ve already seen it first hand with my mother.
Also another silver lining, its doing wonders for division amongst people in other countries. Canadians havent probably felt this united in years. Similarly for other people around the world as they have a common enemy which is America.
Might be a silver lining if if we can pierce some of the MAGA bubbles and they realize not everything Dear Leader does is “based”
Im seeing some MAGA influencers finally pointing out the lies the administration is spinning.
Could be good to have it happen with a market crash before we get to the hardcore white supremest, Christian national shit
If you’ve been holding a lot of cash for the past 2 or 3 years and regretted not investing it, now’s a pretty good time to do it.
The only silver lining is US has been very passive in trade and this could serve as a negotiation strategy, like Trumpers are claiming; A blanket slate tariff on friend and foe alike creates leverage in renegotiating. However it may, and already has, backfired with EU, CA, and China imposing tariffs in response.
I stress that if there exists a valid purpose for imposing a targeted tariff, (and there does, think USMCA over-quota tariffs to protect specific industry), that logic does not justifying blanket tariffs.
The people who trust trump the most (the ones who say buying opportunity minutes before each bloodbath) will be hurt first.
The only silver lining I see is that the populace finally drops the objectively false addage of “conservatives are good for the economy” once/if this is all over.
Kinda like the “drill baby drill” crowd suddenly embracing at least one electric vehicle for political reasons, there’s already grifters and talking heads spouting what would otherwise be anti-consumption rhetoric. In particular I’ve seen the message targeting the expected price increase in electronics- you don’t need a new phone, video game console, etc. This is true, we don’t need to be trashing perfectly good equipment just because a slightly better one is getting strategically released in a marketing blitz.
The method of achieving this anti-consumerism and the mindset of many who might adopt it is not for the right reasons, just like the diesel-heads who’ve embraced Tesla (and still probably won’t actually buy one, just prostrate themselves in front of the dealership). If we don’t pro-actively change our mindset about consumption, as soon as the hardship is lifted it’ll come back with a vengeance as people blow through their new wealth to catch up on the trinkets they missed out on. But the collapse is happening, so if I’m looking for possible optimism in the fallout, longterm there could be a shift in some American consumerism and our prolific waste.
Sure, it only took this long for it to be abundantly clear, even to many of the most ardent, that man has no earthly idea what he is doing. The markets aren’t roiled simply because of the tariffs, they are roiled because the justification was so lacking in any understanding of basic economic facts that analysts now have to consider that there is much worse on the horizon. Think about it, a bunch of people are getting laid off from what were stable jobs with decent income. Rents are still increasing and the grocery bill is still going up, that coupled with an administration that plainly prefers to live in fantasy and if I were (and I am on a small scale) an investor I would have to consider that issue seriously. I think, in a way, that even the more intelligent and savvy with regards to business and economics, were being too optimistic regarding Donald Trump’s ability to help the economy. The wanted it to be true, but not enough to look at his historical performance (which he has) to notice that even before the COVID pandemic the Trump administration was performing worse than Obama and performed worse than Biden. That data was available, but this was the ‘vibes’ election, so the one candidate that had a degree in economics was seen as ‘bad for the economy.’
No. This is quite literally one of the worst policy decisions I’ve ever seen an administration undertake. This is “Iraq War” level catastrophic policy. I am still in complete disbelief that Trump is being allowed to do this.
I think the man just personally really cares about autarky and no trade deficits and wants the US not to import anything and he’s willing to destroy the economy to do it if need be.
No –
The (said) goal that he is trying to achieve is brining manufacturing back to the US. I have been in manufacturing my entire life. It is AT LEAST 2ish years to find a place to build or find a plant to buy. Then you have to hire and put all the functions in place….. Now you are at the 3ish year mark.
PLUS – and no one is really talking about this. The major issue facing mfg int he US is LABOR. Do you want to work 12 hour shifts in a hot plant for minimum or low wage? Neither do most people.
Tariffs certainly impact the rich, but they impact regular folks in much more emergent and meaningful ways. They’re absolutely a regressive tax.
I try to be fairly market-optimistic, but I only see this ending badly for everyone, with us at the epicenter.
All China has to do is offer very friendly trading terms to anyone and everyone to persuade them away from trading with the US. Think of the sales pitch: “do you really want to trade with a country that’s driven by the whims of a volatile fraudster? Why not trade with us? We won’t tariff you into oblivion, we’re a stable country, we have cheap goods.”
> My hopium is that tariffs seem to be impacting the rich as well.
Imagine that instead of tariffs, we’re all facing a tsunami.
People who are able to reach higher ground have a greater chance of survival. The problem is that we’re all starting our race to high ground from sea level while people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg are looking down at us from Mt. Everest and deciding which of our possessions they might wanna pick through first.
Yeah they’re losing money too, but they can afford to lose more than almost anyone else. They’ll be fine and when the economy hits rock bottom they’ll still have enough left over to buy up resources for pennies and then wait for the economy to rebound, which will exponentially increase the value of the resources they now own.
> I don’t buy there’s a grand conspiracy to buy low/sell high because that would mean Trump is capable of well-reasoned thought.
You honestly think these tariffs are Trump’s idea?
The dog (Republicans) will finally catch the car that it’s been chasing. What will the dog do now?
The complete collapse of American power is going to be good for some countries. Not our country, but it could be fantastic for China, and they have a lot of people there, so that could be good for a lot of people.
Like your country has 0 tariffs on the US, and the president comes out with a cardboard Excel sheet falsely claiming you charge a 90% tariff and that they’re charging you a 45% tariff in “retaliation”. What do you even say to that? There’s no way to negotiate that. The people who came up with it are too stupid to be reasoned with, they aren’t even worth talking to. And what if you do get concessions? Next week they’re going to change their mind again and introduce a new 90% tariff on all countries starting with consonants. No point in even talking, you can’t negotiate trade with a dementia patient who doesn’t know what trade is and thinks they must have a positive balance of trade with every country at all times or they’re being scammed.
You stop dealing with the US and you go talk to China, who for all their massive human rights issues, their government employs people who have an education and know the difference between tariffs and trade deficits. You can have a negotiation with them and at least know that they know the basics of how trade works.
I’m a pretty staunch protectionist, but these tariffs just aren’t very well designed. I’m still hoping that we can get some benefits out of it, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. I still don’t think that free trade is a sustainable system, and I believe that both parties will eventually have to embrace tariffs and protectionism out of pure necessity, rather than ideology, but it’s clearly not the time for it right now.
The silver lining is political. Prices are going to go up, stocks are down, and the economy is going to suffer. I expect this to help Dems in the midterms and maybe in 2028.
Usually tariffs are only good in situations like dumping/predatory pricing where a foreign country prices something under market cost to try and drive competition out of business; tires from China is a common example of this. Unfortunately tariffs are best used as a scalpel and Trump is using them as a hammer.
The only benefit I can think of is that this move will discredit tariffs for a generation. I think in 2 years the idea of raising tariffs will be as politically poisonous as cutting aid to Israel or eliminating social security.
This tariff chaos has hugely dropped the price of oil, and oil exports were the main thing propping up Russia’s war economy. Even though Russia escaped the tariffs, their economy was already on life support and this is likely to be catastrophic for Putin
People who shorted the stock market probably feel pretty good right now at least.
That the rest of the world has realized that working with America is highly dependent on a sane and rationale leader every 4 years. That it is better to work around America than it is to directly deal with our bullshit. I don’t blame a single country for doing that. We did it to ourselves and we deserve what’s coming next. This is going to be like Brexit but far far worse.
In the long term, yes, in that it will bring some manufacturing back to the states. However, the tarrifs need to be targeted to products that will come back. The government should speak with U.S. companies to formulate a path to bring manufacturing here.
That involves finding or building a manufacturing facility. Equipping the factory could take a long time, depending on the difficulty of sourcing equipment.
So focused tarrifs, coordinating bringing jobs home. Not the shotgun approach President Trump is using.
The other side of the coin is we have been getting screwed by other countries, who have high tariffs on products made here. There is the argument that Europe needed tariffs to protect the rebuilding of their industrial complex after WW2.
Several years before the Cold War was over, that argument was no longer valid. However, with the reunification of Germany, there was a need for Germany to expand it economy to cover what was essentially a welfare state of East Germany.
During President Trump’s first term, during a G20 conference, President Trump asked President Xi Jinping why China kept raising tariffs on American goods. He responded that no previous administration had asked that. That was a failure of all previous administrations. For that interaction, President Trump did the right thing.
Note that my agreement with a handful of things President Trump has done doesn’t indicate that I support any of his actions beyond the specific actions I am addressing.
It’s interesting that the new tariffs exclude semiconductors manufactured in Taiwan. I don’t know what other products were excluded from tariffs, but excluding semiconductors was a smart decision.
That said, President Biden’s CHIPS and Sciences Act is funding the expansion of domestic semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. We have two plants in the U.S. making the silicone used in manufacturing semiconductors.
While we need domestic production of semiconductors, there is the issue that Taiwan is an ally whose economy depends on exporting semiconductors. I just checked, and in 2022, semiconductors accounted for 38.4% of total exports.
Why would the rich be anti-tariff? It is essentially a regressive tax coming from someone also seeking to reduce the income tax