BusterAg said:

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Jeeper79 said:

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ExPeterKeating said:

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Explain to me why us having, in most cases, a 50% RECIPROCAL tariff on imports is unfair or bad? Why is no one upset at the tariffs pointed at the US? Oooooo, the world will collapse and our economy will collapse. So, my cheap Chinese junk will cost a few bucks more? Big whoop. Maybe the bedwetters should be *****ing at other countries for holding tariff on US exports. But NO! They never do that. Maybe i can just buy something made in the US. If we get a strengthened manufacturing base, then we all win.

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Its not a reciprocal tariff at all. It's formulated to shrink trade deficits (which aren't inherently bad outside a few specific industries).

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It is not a reciprocal tariff at all.

It is formulated to shrink trade deficits.

Trade deficits are not inherently bad.

Our current trade policies screw over the middle class.

The stuff Trump trotted out yesterday is asinine.

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From National Review:

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The new tariffs are economically illiterate, self-destructive, top-to-bottom nonsense, imposed with no sense of rhyme or reason, assembled by White House staffers who do not know which territories have serious trade relationships with the U.S. and which ones are inhabited entirely by penguins.

The Trump administration announced a 10 percent tariff on all imports from the Australian territories of the Heard and McDonald Islands.

Those are uninhabited islands. What, are the penguins stealing American jobs?

The administration also announced a 10 percent tariff on imports from Jan Mayan, a Norwegian volcanic island. It has no permanent residents, just 18 personnel operating a meteorological station and airfield.

I was going to write, "They might as well have picked the numbers out of thin air," but James Surowiecki thinks he's figured out the formula. "They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us. So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64 percent, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us."

Except, according to the agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce that tracks foreign tariffs, Indonesia doesn't charge anything close to a 64 percent tariff. The U.S. has most-favored-nation status with Indonesia:

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Indonesia's average Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) applied tariff rate was 8.1 percent in 2021 (latest data available). Indonesia's average MFN applied tariff rate was 8.7 percent for agricultural products and 8.0 percent for non-agricultural products in 2021 (latest data available).

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You can find the whole list of Indonesian tariff rates for every conceivable kind of U.S. export offal, sea bass, ostriches, sardines, "goats (live)" here. Most are 2.5 percent to 5 percent.

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In response to Israel suspending all tariffs on US goods, Trump slapped a 17% tariff on Israel. That makes those tariffs not reciprocal but rather unilateral by the US. How does that make any sense at all?

No Spin Ag said:

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Is this the thread where it should be put that the stock market just dropped 1,500 points, or 3.5%? Or would that be another thread?

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You know what would make the stock market shoot up? Printing another trillion dollars. What's good for the goose might not be good for the gander in this case.

Do you refute that:

1) Every other developed country protects their middle class jobs more jealously than the US does through trade policies.

2) The aggregate effect of the pre-Trump global trade policies impact the types of jobs that are available in the US.

I'm not defending yesterday's bull****, by the way.

No, that arrogant French crap has been going on since they lost at Waterloo...... **** them.

Quo Vadis? said:

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No Spin Ag said:

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Is this the thread where it should be put that the stock market just dropped 1,500 points, or 3.5%? Or would that be another thread?

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You know what would make the stock market shoot up? Printing another trillion dollars. What's good for the goose might not be good for the gander in this case.

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Worked for Trump first term.

He likes to try out everything I guess.

BusterAg said:

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Do you refute that:

1) Every other developed country protects their middle class jobs more jealously than the US does through trade policies.

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No, but they are also quasi socialist in nature (to greater or lesser degrees) and as such are not the place I would look for enlightened economic policy. The left does, but that is because they want that socialism here. I was under the impression that conservatives and MAGA didn't want socialism here.

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2) The aggregate effect of the pre-Trump global trade policies impact the types of jobs that are available in the US.

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To an extent, but so do wages, taxes, specialization, and a whole host of things that aren't related to just tariffs.

If this is an attempt to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, it isn't going to work. Why not tax the crap out of US companies that have off-shored their manufacturing or put tax and other incentives in place to encourage investment in domestic manufacturing?

BusterAg said:

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Quo Vadis? said:

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BusterAg said:

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BTKAG97 said:

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It appears people are *****ing because the White House's definition of "reciprocal" doesn't match their definition.

While I agree with them, it's really a pointless thing to ***** about.

And NO, this post is not a statement of agreement or dissatisfaction with the tariffs.

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I disagree.

I like the idea of reciprocal tariffs. This bull**** is not reciprocal tariffs. There is no sane definition of reciprocal tariffs that makes this acceptable.

Trump should trot this out there for what it is / should be: a starting point to negotiations with foreign countries on truly reciprocal tariffs. The **** he trotted out there yesterday is insane. This is worse than the marker expanding the hurricane path predictions on live TV. Trump needs to right the ship here, quick.

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If you guys have been paying attention, Trump negotiating is all about "start high, end high". Yes it looks foolish, the good thing is, he understands power dynamics, and realizes we're holding all the face cards.

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I agree with this.

Including the part where calling these reciprocal tariffs is foolish.

Trump underestimated the intelligence of his voting base. Let's see how that plays out for him. I don't think it will be good.

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Well a large part of his voting base can't understand any of this. And of those that DO at least half of them support it anyway.

We're screwed. There was a chance true actual reciprocal tariffs could have been used as a negotiating tactic. But how do you negotiate with this madness?

It not the end of the world but this is the beginning of a new financial era in human history.....

Trump lit the fuse to blow up the old industrial aged system. It will blow up within the next six months.

The digital age system is just waiting on the sidelines to be implemented.


They've been telling everyone CBDCs and Tokenization of ALL assets are coming. The EU even gives you their timeline....October 2025.


We are going to witness EPIC changes to the world economy over the next four years. I hope everyone is ready......

5th largest single day drop in history, and the largest not attributed to the pandemic#stockmarketcrash #StockMarket pic.twitter.com/zxyeMBvpya

— Henry (@TheDragonPup) April 3, 2025

an interesting question does anyone know the real answer to:

what would have happened if the Trump Administration had increased tariffs by 10% on every country

but never told anyone about it.

wouldn't that have accomplished the objective of bringing more money into the Treasury and increasing purchases of American goods?

pagerman @ work said:

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Quote:

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2) The aggregate effect of the pre-Trump global trade policies impact the types of jobs that are available in the US.

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To an extent, but so do wages, taxes, specialization, and a whole host of things that aren't related to just tariffs.

If this is an attempt to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, it isn't going to work. Why not tax the crap out of US companies that have off-shored their manufacturing or put tax and other incentives in place to encourage investment in domestic manufacturing?

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Tariffs do the above.

I think this is best understood as the opening round of negotiations regarding a devaluation of the dollar and a renegotiation of existing debt held in foreign hands due to dollar reserve status. Trade imbalance / balance of payments is at the heart of this.

Has nothing to do with reciprocity or tariffs per se. The lesson here is to pay no attention to what President Trumps says. We should watch what he does.

BusterAg said:

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pagerman @ work said:

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Quote:

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2) The aggregate effect of the pre-Trump global trade policies impact the types of jobs that are available in the US.

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To an extent, but so do wages, taxes, specialization, and a whole host of things that aren't related to just tariffs.

If this is an attempt to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, it isn't going to work. Why not tax the crap out of US companies that have off-shored their manufacturing or put tax and other incentives in place to encourage investment in domestic manufacturing?

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Tariffs do the above.

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Tariffs can (potentially), but what I am talking about does so in a targeted, directed way.

Across the board (or practically so) "tariffs" like what Trump has done do not do that. Irrationality begets more irrationality in response.

We have a long way to go to the down side.....

The FED and Treasury will jump in later today to try to stop the bleeding. They may even get it to go green.....but this isn't just a one day event.

The music is stopping.....

AP headline being blasted out across the country.

Dow drops 1,500 as US stocks lead worldwide sell-off after Trump's tariffs ignite a COVID-like shock

Anyone who thinks that most people will see that (few people actually read articles, just the headlines) not care about the why Trump is doing it. All they will see is him tanking the market and eventually the economy.

DarkBrandon01 said:

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The US will never again have a post war monopoly on industry. These tariffs will destroy the economy while this administration chases a dream that isn't possible anymore. The rest of the world will learn to trade without us and the US will no longer dominate global financial markets.

What MAGA doesn't realize is that other countries making your products is a sign of strength, not weakness. Our quality of life is so fantastic BECAUSE of outsourcing. All of our products are cheap because they are made in sweatshops overseas, in countries too underdeveloped to have any leverage in the market. And Trump has the audacity to say that those countries are exploiting us! This era of US dominance will come to an end if the tariffs are allowed to remain.

I said this months ago and I'll say it again. Start stockpiling food.

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This is not necessarily true when it comes to considering products in a blanket manner. There are some products that need to be made here in the US.

Seriously77 said:

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At least the boomers will be as broke as everyone else.

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This boomer will be picking up quality stocks at cheaper prices.

Zobel said:

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I think this is best understood as the opening round of negotiations regarding a devaluation of the dollar and a renegotiation of existing debt held in foreign hands due to dollar reserve status. Trade imbalance / balance of payments is at the heart of this.

Has nothing to do with reciprocity or tariffs per se. The lesson here is to pay no attention to what President Trumps says. We should watch what he does.

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It helps, from a bargaining standpoint, that the data you're using supports the tariff number you're starting with. In this case, the reciprocal tariff has zero basis in any economic foundation, and the data they used to support it isn't even supported by the sources they cite. It's all just a bunch of made up numbers, and they hoped that either no one would notice, or that we as a country forgot basic algebra.

HTownAg98 said:

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Zobel said:

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I think this is best understood as the opening round of negotiations regarding a devaluation of the dollar and a renegotiation of existing debt held in foreign hands due to dollar reserve status. Trade imbalance / balance of payments is at the heart of this.

Has nothing to do with reciprocity or tariffs per se. The lesson here is to pay no attention to what President Trumps says. We should watch what he does.

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It helps, from a bargaining standpoint, that the data you're using supports the tariff number you're starting with. In this case, the reciprocal tariff has zero basis in any economic foundation, and the data they used to support it isn't even supported by the sources they cite. It's all just a bunch of made up numbers, and they hoped that either no one would notice, or that we as a country forgot basic algebra.

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Not really, because tariffs aren't the point, they are just the opening tool to begin the discussion. Multi-lateral currency manipulation requires a lot of coordination. Someone earlier in the thread pointed out that mid-terms will be here before we know it, so there isn't the luxury of time to get everyone to the table.

Trump doesn't care about tariffs, he wants a weaker dollar, lower treasury yields (i.e. lower borrowing costs), and to keep the US dollar as the global reserve currency. The first two you can pretty easily accomplish on your own. Doing those things while keeping the reserve currency status is the hard part. That's why you need the other countries at the table.

Also, the tariffs aimed at Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, etc. have nothing to do with them and everything to do with putting China in a corner. Re-exporting is no longer an option, so let's talk.


If you care for a long read, it's all right here.

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf

Yeah, man. Ignore the talking point. Tariff here is a stick to encourage countries to be willing to participate in a Plaza Accord 2.0. Or perhaps a taste of what will happen if they don't. At least that's my read.

Nanomachines son said:

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blacksox said:

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This is going to be an absolute DISASTER! It will be interesting to watch the MAGA wave jumping ship as the inevitable happens. Not good!

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Watching people who post things like "Free Luigi" because they hate CEOs of "big corporations" now posting things like "uh man these tariffs sure are bad for the stock market" is bewildering.

— captive dreamer (@siegfriedmuell) April 3, 2025

Watching leftists whine about the stock market has been hilarious. Utterly intellectually and morally bankrupt to the core.

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My UNH is doing pretty well today.

HTownAg98 said:

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Zobel said:

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I think this is best understood as the opening round of negotiations regarding a devaluation of the dollar and a renegotiation of existing debt held in foreign hands due to dollar reserve status. Trade imbalance / balance of payments is at the heart of this.

Has nothing to do with reciprocity or tariffs per se. The lesson here is to pay no attention to what President Trumps says. We should watch what he does.

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It helps, from a bargaining standpoint, that the data you're using supports the tariff number you're starting with. In this case, the reciprocal tariff has zero basis in any economic foundation, and the data they used to support it isn't even supported by the sources they cite. It's all just a bunch of made up numbers, and they hoped that either no one would notice, or that we as a country forgot basic algebra.

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Well it's not an unreasonable assumption.

Larry S Ross said:

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Seriously77 said:

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At least the boomers will be as broke as everyone else.

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This boomer will be picking up quality stocks at cheaper prices.

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This is the way. If you're smart, you'll see that Billions are being committed to investments in the U.S. because of this. Good on Trump to shake things up by leveling the playing field, which will encourage more manufacturing in the U.S. This is not a short term fix, it will take years but is the only path forward if we expect to survive as a sustainable superpower and not be held hostage on medicine, steel, oil, and semiconductors.

pagerman @ work said:

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BusterAg said:

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pagerman @ work said:

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Quote:

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2) The aggregate effect of the pre-Trump global trade policies impact the types of jobs that are available in the US.

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To an extent, but so do wages, taxes, specialization, and a whole host of things that aren't related to just tariffs.

If this is an attempt to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, it isn't going to work. Why not tax the crap out of US companies that have off-shored their manufacturing or put tax and other incentives in place to encourage investment in domestic manufacturing?

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Tariffs do the above.

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Tariffs can (potentially), but what I am talking about does so in a targeted, directed way.

Across the board (or practically so) "tariffs" like what Trump has done do not do that. Irrationality begets more irrationality in response.

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What Trump did yesterday is not really defendable.

I think we are in full agreement here.

LMCane said:

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blacksox said:

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This is going to be an absolute DISASTER! It will be interesting to watch the MAGA wave jumping ship as the inevitable happens. Not good!

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leftists who have gotten everything wrong the last 50 years

now proclaiming the end of the world based on their amazing perspicacity understanding world trade issues...

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Please comment on the topic. Trump and this "reciprocal tariffs" is a legit lie to our faces. They literally don't know what they are doing. Please read the posts above about how these were calculated.

This is a farce, a massive, dangerous farce.

I am big picture money illiterate, so I enjoy the talk about this stuff because I know nothing about it.

📉 Since Trump took office in Jan 2025, the 10Y yield has quietly slipped from 4.79% to 4.17%.

The 2Y just broke lower to 3.77%—a big move with even bigger implications.

Lower yields mean cheaper refinancing. With $36.5T in debt and $9T coming due, this is a stealth balance… pic.twitter.com/pqCA5Dgmw6

— Quantus Insights (@QuantusInsights) April 3, 2025

🚨 #BREAKING: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his country is ready to negotiate with the Trump administration to remove the tariffs. pic.twitter.com/oNy9P6HoZW

— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) April 3, 2025

🚨 CANADA STARTS TO CAVE! Prime Minister Mark Carney, who recently said the relationship with the U.S. is over, backtracks big-time

"The U.S., absolutely, is our ally! Our ally in security and defense, our most important security ally!"pic.twitter.com/9JwHMh1ofy

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 3, 2025

Part of the problem left by Biden is that to avoid higher debt payments on the sovereign debt they took expiring long term debt and put it in lower rate (ie cheaper) short term debt. Which means 2/3 or $20+ trillion in debt is due to be refinanced in the next 4 years. If the rates are still extremely high then servicing that debt will sink the budget and we will death spiral. We will have to massively increase taxes while cutting services or take out more debt that will further cause the costs to spiral because the new debt will be to service the old debt and to sell it will require higher rates (significantly higher probably) or we will have to massively, possibly hyper, inflate our currency to pay off the debt which basically makes everyone poor, destroys any non-tangible asset and crunches the bottom line for business and pay for workers. Generally there are only two ways out of hyper inflation, a massive depression or scrapping your currency (usually more than once) to stabilize it.

So long to short term debt swap is bad, we have to fix, this is part of that strategy. Trump has been on the Fed since before the election that rates would have to come down or else. Well the or else wasn't necessarily about replacing people or seizing the Fed, it was partly/mostly that the American economy would collapse from the painful and necessary refinance of our debt at levels that are too high.

So Trump is trying to stabilize the finance of our debt, stop the deficit spend bleeding and find alternative ways to clear some of that debt (eg the Gold Card).

It's just that a lot of people see the trees, or even the forest, and not the giant mountain behind them.

JUST IN: Former Commerce Secretary predicts Trump's tariffs won't be in place by the back half of 2025 because other countries will rush to the negotiating table.

Former George W. Bush Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez just made the prediction on CNBC.

Gutierrez went as far… pic.twitter.com/8yyGiuwx0j

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 2, 2025

I also don't think these tariffs will be implemented for very long, if at all, but what are we trying to negotiate exactly? Many of these countries do not actually have very high tariffs on the US. Is the idea to get their small tariffs to 0? If that is the goal, why lie so much? It sounds like basically it's just another way of saying "we want free trade" but it's wrapped up in isolationist/protectionist bs.

aezmvp said:

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Part of the problem left by Biden is that to avoid higher debt payments on the sovereign debt they took expiring long term debt and put it in lower rate (ie cheaper) short term debt. Which means 2/3 or $20+ trillion in debt is due to be refinanced in the next 4 years. If the rates are still extremely high then servicing that debt will sink the budget and we will death spiral. We will have to massively increase taxes while cutting services or take out more debt that will further cause the costs to spiral because the new debt will be to service the old debt and to sell it will require higher rates (significantly higher probably) or we will have to massively, possibly hyper, inflate our currency to pay off the debt which basically makes everyone poor, destroys any non-tangible asset and crunches the bottom line for business and pay for workers. Generally there are only two ways out of hyper inflation, a massive depression or scrapping your currency (usually more than once) to stabilize it.

So long to short term debt swap is bad, we have to fix, this is part of that strategy. Trump has been on the Fed since before the election that rates would have to come down or else. Well the or else wasn't necessarily about replacing people or seizing the Fed, it was partly/mostly that the American economy would collapse from the painful and necessary refinance of our debt at levels that are too high.

So Trump is trying to stabilize the finance of our debt, stop the deficit spend bleeding and find alternative ways to clear some of that debt (eg the Gold Card).

It's just that a lot of people see the trees, or even the forest, and not the giant mountain behind them.

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I think this shows what you are talking about.

Or it's a negotiating strategy to force policy objectives on self-interested players in a world that has already bypassed post World War II reality.

A) If you want to reshore business and industry and cannot do so by enacting tax break incentives and direct subsidies.

B) Equalize trade terms and open markets to US goods.

C) Rebuild strategic sectors in the US that are incredibly exposed to hostile powers (like China, duh)

D) Employ the large part of our country that has left the work force or is under/unemployed

E) Reshape our debt landscape due to the reckless bond and national debt policies under Biden

and have all that lead to lower or eliminated deficits and lower entitlement spending due to higher employment across the lower and lower middle class... then how exactly do you do it?

And force players that are openly hostile and have had a trade advantage on us for the better part of a century (admittedly to our foreign policy interest for 40 of those years, no doubt) to come to the table and voluntarily negotiate?

Because saying hey we're your largest market, will you pretty please play fair and I'll send you kick backs through our NGOs and maybe not start a color revolution hasn't exactly done gangbusters for us.

Saying oh hey nice economy you've built on non-reciprocal access to our market you've got there. Be a shame if that went up in smoke, wouldn't it? Maybe we can work something out. That might work. World leaders aren't world leaders because they grew up on Care Bears and My Little Pony. Get real.

Five things to consider with respect to the Ruling Class' freakout over tariffs:

1) The Ruling Class' entire business model has been predicated for decades on diminishing America's industrial base and outsourcing our manufacturing capacity -- most critically to our worst… pic.twitter.com/H0lSnxZESm

— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) April 3, 2025

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Five things to consider with respect to the Ruling Class' freakout over tariffs:

1) The Ruling Class' entire business model has been predicated for decades on diminishing America's industrial base and outsourcing our manufacturing capacity -- most critically to our worst adversary Communist China -- under an unfree trade regime. Never discussed are the forgotten victims of this system. Cheaper widgets at what cost to our national interest?

2) Consequently, we have become reliant on others for our literal survival since we lack the ability to produce everything from essential medicines to critical military hardware components.

3) Rebalancing the global trade system has two primary goals: a) Opening up genuine free and open trade by causing other countries to yield in response to counter-tariffs, and bring such barriers to trade down. The benefits will undoubtedly redound to American citizens. b) Reshoring critical industries/rebuilding America's industrial base. If we are reliant on others for our survival we will neither be dependent, nor free. It's simply an existential imperative to break out of this suicidal box.

4) Short-term market gyrations generated by beneficiaries of the status quo are to be expected. Any radical economic change will cause financial market jitters. We're breaking up an architecture developed over decades with hugely powerful entrenched forces on the other side. The incumbent players want to see this project fail, so of course they're amplifying hysteria to the max. It's important to have the perspective that first off, financial markets don't always reflect economic conditions, and second, that we won't be able to evaluate the efficacy of these policies for years. Last but not least, of course we've already seen the policies bear tangible fruit in the immediate-term with several trade partners dropping their tariffs.

5) A benefit President Trump's lame duck status is that he can do what he perceives to be the right thing for the country even if it's the politically difficult thing, even if it causes volatility, and even if it's positive effects might not be immediately felt.

America should seek leaders willing to do what is right over the long-run even if it causes a freakout among our elites in the short-run.
[url=https://x.com/bhweingarten/status/1907816405707497741/photo/1][/url]
[url=https://x.com/bhweingarten/status/1907816405707497741/photo/1][/url]

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