Trumponomics - Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love Tariffs

[Holman]

At this point I have to believe that *someone* has educated Trump on how tariffs actually work, and that the threat is now just a rhetorical ploy akin to "Mexico will pay for the wall."

Trump will find other ways to mess with perceived trade rivals, but it won't be tariffs as such (other than a few carefully targeted ones that will get maximum coverage as a Trump victory).

Am I dreaming? I just think the rich people propping up his administration know that they have too much to lose from reckless economic policies.

[El Guapo]

At this point I have to believe that *someone* has educated Trump on how tariffs actually work, and that the threat is now just a rhetorical ploy akin to "Mexico will pay for the wall."

I am sure someone has *attempted* to educate Trump on this. And I suspect that no one has tried for quite awhile now.

[IceBear]

Yeah he went from "Let's get people to study this" to "25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Feb 1st" in 4 hours

[Rumpy]

Yeah, it's possible someone on his team has tried, but from everything I've heard him say, it all comes across sounding like he has no real clue. It would end up making things more expensive across the border in both countries due to the basis in how stuff is manufactured, and it would not improve the economy like he thinks it would. In fact, it could lead both countries into a recession, something we've just recently come out of due to Covid.

[hepcat]

The only thing that gives me some hope is that if it starts to raise prices on our end and the deplorables get pissed, he’ll find a patsy to blame and discontinue them. Adoration is his oxygen.

[Kraken]

At this point I have to believe that *someone* has educated Trump on how tariffs actually work, and that the threat is now just a rhetorical ploy akin to "Mexico will pay for the wall."

I am sure someone has *attempted* to educate Trump on this. And I suspect that no one has tried for quite awhile now.

Oh, I'm quite sure the oligarchs are fine with ultimately replacing income taxes with consumption taxes. Make the poor pay their fair share!

[Holman]

At this point I have to believe that *someone* has educated Trump on how tariffs actually work, and that the threat is now just a rhetorical ploy akin to "Mexico will pay for the wall."

I am sure someone has *attempted* to educate Trump on this. And I suspect that no one has tried for quite awhile now.

Oh, I'm quite sure the oligarchs are fine with ultimately replacing income taxes with consumption taxes. Make the poor pay their fair share!

Why should they care? They offshore their assets anyway.

[Rumpy]

The only thing that gives me some hope is that if it starts to raise prices on our end and the deplorables get pissed, he’ll find a patsy to blame and discontinue them. Adoration is his oxygen.

My best guess is that he ultimately doesn't care for his voter base. He'll throw them under the bus if he has to in order to meet his own agenda. But it's been refreshing to see some (via Youtube) of his voter base slowly start to realize it would raise prices for them.

[hepcat]

The only thing that gives me some hope is that if it starts to raise prices on our end and the deplorables get pissed, he’ll find a patsy to blame and discontinue them. Adoration is his oxygen.

My best guess is that he ultimately doesn't care for his voter base. He'll throw them under the bus if he has to in order to meet his own agenda. But it's been refreshing to see some (via Youtube) of his voter base slowly start to realize it would raise prices for them.

Of course he doesn't care about them. He cares about having them worship him though. He is and always has been one huge ego. Don't underestimate what lengths he'll go to to make his people love him. His own father never told it to him, so he has to get it somewhere.

I remember decades ago he was on the Howard Stern radio show with some good looking young actor of the time. They got into an argument because the actor started talking about some of the women he had dated, and Trump kept chiming in about how each one of them had wanted to go out with him but he had turned them down. It was comical. He eventually got mad when he announced that people had told him he'd been with more beautiful women than Don Juan...at which point the actor laughed out loud briefly. That was all it took for Trump. He became furious and started shouting at the guy.

This is the person the deplorables wanted for a president. I can't stress how stupid they are.

[Rumpy]

Yeah, it's going to be a tough 4 years. It saddens me where we're at right now. My only hope is that there are some checks and balances that do work that end up making his job harder in implementing some of the changes he wants to make.

[IceBear]

Yeah, it's going to be a tough 4 years. It saddens me where we're at right now. My only hope is that there are some checks and balances that do work that end up making his job harder in implementing some of the changes he wants to make.

Only the impact to his Billionaire Club's wallets

[Punisher]

At this point I have to believe that *someone* has educated Trump on how tariffs actually work, and that the threat is now just a rhetorical ploy akin to "Mexico will pay for the wall."

I am sure someone has *attempted* to educate Trump on this. And I suspect that no one has tried for quite awhile now.

Oh, I'm quite sure the oligarchs are fine with ultimately replacing income taxes with consumption taxes. Make the poor pay their fair share!

Why should they care? They offshore their assets anyway.

I tried hiding my assets offshore once.
I found out after the fact that it's very difficult recovering them once you drop them from the boat.

[Jolor]

At this point I have to believe that *someone* has educated Trump on how tariffs actually work, and that the threat is now just a rhetorical ploy akin to "Mexico will pay for the wall."

I am sure someone has *attempted* to educate Trump on this. And I suspect that no one has tried for quite awhile now.

Oh, I'm quite sure the oligarchs are fine with ultimately replacing income taxes with consumption taxes. Make the poor pay their fair share!

Why should they care? They offshore their assets anyway.

I tried hiding my assets offshore once.
I found out after the fact that it's very difficult recovering them once you drop them from the boat.

That's why I put a big 'X' on the floor of my boat before I rows to shore.

[Smoove_B]

Who has time for tariffs when we have a digital asset stockpile to consider:

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration will evaluate whether to create a "national digital asset stockpile" — making good on a promise to support the use of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

However, his executive order fell short of creating a strategic bitcoin reserve outright, as some crypto advocates had hoped.

...

Also in Thursday's order, Trump reversed a Biden administration directive to research a U.S. digital currency, often called a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. Such currencies been adopted and researched by some governments around the world, but they have also been viewed with scrutiny and skepticism by some who cite privacy and surveillance concerns.

Trump's order, which said CBDCs "threaten the stability of the financial system, individual privacy, and the sovereignty of the United States," prohibits the establishing, issuing or circulating a CBDC in the United States.

[Pyperkub]

So, with the massive tariffs announcement earlier this week, I wonder if I panic bought a new TV.

We had been talking about getting another TV, and I had looked around last week for Super Bowl TV deals and had looked around a bit, then I saw the tariffs headlines and still had a browser tab open to Costco's $300 off offer on Samsung's The Frame and clicked buy.

Knowing that modern TV's are also spyware/ad machines, I also went to Amazon and bought a raspberry pi kit to setup a Pi-Hole at home (tho it appears as tho Samsung TV's are hyper-aggressive when it comes to ads and getting the pi-hole configured correctly will take some work.

Ah, well, wish me and the bank account luck!

Also thought about a PS5/5Pro, but declined for now (still have the PS4Pro and an XSX), was also looking at a new computer (especially with Windows 10 going out of support later this year, and my current rig/mobo not supporting TPM 2.0, so not eligible for win11, but the reviews on a lot of the prebuilt options with a 4070 ti super looking really crappy (refurbed Mobos, and other build quality issues), and non-prebuilt cards with 16GB VRAM - which really looks like a minimum for gaming moving forward) - still being insanely expensive (costing more than the TV), I held off for now.

Not sure if I jumped the gun and panic-bought or not. Looking forward to the new TV tho, even if moving the old one over to Mrs. Kub's office and mounting the new one (and seeing if I can program the old logitech universal remote for it will work - I even need to find the replacement control board I bought for the logitech, as some buttons just aren't working anymore, but it's buried in a box somewhere...).

Lots of home tech work to do in the next week, it appears.

[LordMortis]

So, with the massive tariffs announcement earlier this week, I wonder if I panic bought a new TV.

We had been talking about getting another TV, and I had looked around last week for Super Bowl TV deals and had looked around a bit, then I saw the tariffs headlines and still had a browser tab open to Costco's $300 off offer on Samsung's The Frame and clicked buy.

Knowing that modern TV's are also spyware/ad machines, I also went to Amazon and bought a raspberry pi kit to setup a Pi-Hole at home (tho it appears as tho Samsung TV's are hyper-aggressive when it comes to ads and getting the pi-hole configured correctly will take some work.

Ah, well, wish me and the bank account luck!

Also thought about a PS5/5Pro, but declined for now (still have the PS4Pro and an XSX), was also looking at a new computer (especially with Windows 10 going out of support later this year, and my current rig/mobo not supporting TPM 2.0, so not eligible for win11, but the reviews on a lot of the prebuilt options with a 4070 ti super looking really crappy (refurbed Mobos, and other build quality issues), and non-prebuilt cards with 16GB VRAM - which really looks like a minimum for gaming moving forward) - still being insanely expensive (costing more than the TV), I held off for now.

Not sure if I jumped the gun and panic-bought or not. Looking forward to the new TV tho, even if moving the old one over to Mrs. Kub's office and mounting the new one (and seeing if I can program the old logitech universal remote for it will work - I even need to find the replacement control board I bought for the logitech, as some buttons just aren't working anymore, but it's buried in a box somewhere...).

Lots of home tech work to do in the next week, it appears.

I have a roof and a car to buy this year. The roof remains??? for the increase but you know it's coming. Auto prices are expected to take a good 8% increase. I'm still holding off and it's going to bite me in the ass, as does it feel like everything does.

[Blackhawk]

There a piece of tech I've been wanting and have been putting back for (new ereader), but I've been hesitating to spend the money, even though it's not a fortune. I may go ahead and decide on a model and make it happen now.

The Chinese tariffs make me glad that I got away from the board game Kickstarter shuffle. I only have one outstanding project.

[Skinypupy]

This was posted on FB so I don’t have a link to the article directly, but I feel like it sums things up well.

Prof. David Honig of Indiana University.

“I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don’t know, I’m an adjunct professor at Indiana University - Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.

Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of “The Art of the Deal,” a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you’ve read The Art of the Deal, or if you’ve followed Trump lately, you’ll know, even if you didn’t know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call “distributive bargaining.”

Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you’re fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump’s world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.

The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining the two sides don’t have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.

The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can’t demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren’t binary. China’s choices aren’t (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don’t buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.

One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you’re going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don’t have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won’t agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you’re going to have to find another cabinet maker.

There isn’t another Canada.

So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.

Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM - HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.

Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that’s just not how politics works, not over the long run.

For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here’s another huge problem for us.

Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.

From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn’t even bringing checkers to a chess match. He’s bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether it’s better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”

[Holman]

Thanks. That's a good read.

[LordMortis]

Here's to hoping Canada says effective immediately all invoicing both as record of import and for all exported goods is to be paid in CAD. No exceptions. Forget retaliatory tariffs. All that does is inflate Canadian prices. But the USD? Fuck that.

[Rumpy]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting, Skinny.

And good idea, LM. I wouldn't be opposed to that.

[IceBear]

We're screwed. We need to stand up for ourselves but he said if we retaliate tge tariffs go up. So at this point do we just accept it and hope his own tariffs cause enough damage he stops or hit back and really get screwed. He has insinuated enough about taking us over he probably wants that

[Rumpy]

Let the tariffs go up if they have to, in my opinion. They're not going to be the end of the world. What we do need to do is put up a resistance and counter those tariffs with some of our own, or what LM has proposed. We can't be taken advantage of.

[IceBear]

I'm just waiting for Trump to declare we are unlawfully hurting their economy so he can use the military

[Zarathud]

Negotiations with Trump is futile. There is only a deal if both sides want to compromise. If you concede, he will want more.

You dare him and watch him flounder when bullying doesn’t work. Then you give him a way to save face, because it’s just a performance and not real to him anyway.

[Rumpy]

Unlawfully? Please. We're well within our legal means to defend ourselves.

[WYBaugh]

So, with the massive tariffs announcement earlier this week, I wonder if I panic bought a new TV.

We had been talking about getting another TV, and I had looked around last week for Super Bowl TV deals and had looked around a bit, then I saw the tariffs headlines and still had a browser tab open to Costco's $300 off offer on Samsung's The Frame and clicked buy.

Knowing that modern TV's are also spyware/ad machines, I also went to Amazon and bought a raspberry pi kit to setup a Pi-Hole at home (tho it appears as tho Samsung TV's are hyper-aggressive when it comes to ads and getting the pi-hole configured correctly will take some work.

Ah, well, wish me and the bank account luck!

Also thought about a PS5/5Pro, but declined for now (still have the PS4Pro and an XSX), was also looking at a new computer (especially with Windows 10 going out of support later this year, and my current rig/mobo not supporting TPM 2.0, so not eligible for win11, but the reviews on a lot of the prebuilt options with a 4070 ti super looking really crappy (refurbed Mobos, and other build quality issues), and non-prebuilt cards with 16GB VRAM - which really looks like a minimum for gaming moving forward) - still being insanely expensive (costing more than the TV), I held off for now.

Not sure if I jumped the gun and panic-bought or not. Looking forward to the new TV tho, even if moving the old one over to Mrs. Kub's office and mounting the new one (and seeing if I can program the old logitech universal remote for it will work - I even need to find the replacement control board I bought for the logitech, as some buttons just aren't working anymore, but it's buried in a box somewhere...).

Lots of home tech work to do in the next week, it appears.

Which Raspberry PI did you buy from Amazon?

[IceBear]

Unlawfully? Please. We're well within our legal means to defend ourselves.

You're using logic and rational thinking when talking about Trump

[Rumpy]

Unlawfully? Please. We're well within our legal means to defend ourselves.

You're using logic and rational thinking when talking about Trump

Where would we be breaking the law, exactly?? We would be defending our borders via tariffs. Anything else would just be BS. The law wouldn't even be entering it, and there's nothing he can do about that. This is exactly why we need to hit back and hit back hard! Don't give in to the despair.

[Victoria Raverna]

I think instead of setting tariffs to hit back, just start looking for other sources then stop importing from US.

Retaliating with tariffs is a waste of time, US will raise the tariffs and then Canada will do the same until no trade are possible between the two countries. Might as well just go ahead and start looking for some other trading partners to replace US.

[Rumpy]

Yeah, it's been discussed. But I do think that tariffs need to be used, at least temporarily while we draft new trading agreements with other countries. At least with new trading partners, it will go a long way to teaching the U.S about taking us for granted.

[Blackhawk]

Unlawfully? Please. We're well within our legal means to defend ourselves.

You're using logic and rational thinking when talking about Trump

Where would we be breaking the law, exactly?? We would be defending our borders via tariffs. Anything else would just be BS. The law wouldn't even be entering it, and there's nothing he can do about that. This is exactly why we need to hit back and hit back hard! Don't give in to the despair.

The point, as I read it, is that it doesn't matter. It wouldn't be going to court, it would be Trump making the claim. When Trump makes claims, reality doesn't apply (after all, we're being invaded!)

[Rumpy]

Unlawfully? Please. We're well within our legal means to defend ourselves.

You're using logic and rational thinking when talking about Trump

Where would we be breaking the law, exactly?? We would be defending our borders via tariffs. Anything else would just be BS. The law wouldn't even be entering it, and there's nothing he can do about that. This is exactly why we need to hit back and hit back hard! Don't give in to the despair.

The point, as I read it, is that it doesn't matter. It wouldn't be going to court, it would be Trump making the claim. When Trump makes claims, reality doesn't apply (after all, we're being invaded!)

Yeah, I got that. But we're talking Canada vs the U.S here. He's got no recourse. That's just giving in to the claim of annexation.

[IceBear]

Unlawfully? Please. We're well within our legal means to defend ourselves.

You're using logic and rational thinking when talking about Trump

Where would we be breaking the law, exactly?? We would be defending our borders via tariffs. Anything else would just be BS. The law wouldn't even be entering it, and there's nothing he can do about that. This is exactly why we need to hit back and hit back hard! Don't give in to the despair.

My use of unlawful was meant to be sarcastic...sorry it wasn't clear. Just saying Trump will call it unlawful and his cult will believe it

[Rumpy]

Well, of course that's to be expected at this point. He'll make some noise. That's why it's important to react in a manner that will catch him off-guard. He's expecting us to be weak and give in to his demands. What he isn't expecting is for us to fight back with our dignity in check. Our strength is that he doesn't really know us like we know ourselves. We can use that to our advantage. If there's one thing, it's that he's awaken something in us.

[gilraen]

Hockey fans boo U.S. national anthem at Ottawa Senators game after Trump imposes tariffs

[Smoove_B]

As seen online - "The only Senators to take a stance against Trump"

[Kraken]

I learned integrative bargaining when I worked as a retail buyer for several years. In most negotiations, both the buyer and the seller want to get to Yes, and they haggle to define the parameters that both sides consider fair. That was pretty easy when the stakes were just pricing and terms on a seasonal book order, and when you know that you'll be facing the same seller/buyer again in six months. Might be harder when national economies are at stake and one party holds a much stronger hand and the participants periodically get replaced. Even under those conditions, though, it's never a zero-sum game.

[waitingtoconnect]

I'm just waiting for Trump to declare we are unlawfully hurting their economy so he can use the military

My firm belief is he will ratchet up the tariffs until you agree to be part of the US. Hes relying on the 40% youth support in some far right poll and the 20% in Alberta as an initial bargaining position. I’ve got some of you he’s thinking, it’s not a lot to get the rest of you.

From a blue state red state perspective Canada’s trade with the Us mostly goes to blue states so trump doesn’t care about them. It also hurts unionised labor in the car industry, something maga would like to crush.

An invasion now won’t happen, Americans would reject it. Only 29% support the tariffs, an invasion would have less than double digit support.

Americans aren’t indoctrinated enough by maga yet that they think grabbing Greenland and Canada is a good idea.

Trump is employing 19th century colonial thinking: the post world war 2 order showed how having friends was more important than having an empire. Such was the realisation that the Soviets “created” friends in Eastern Europe and in the far east (Mongolia, North Korea etc) rather than annex outright.

Canada has to see what a bad partner the Us is now, they have reneged on two major agreements. And trump has reneged on his own agreement that frankly you rolled over far too easily for.

A smarter move would to be to propose a customs union with Canada, offer surplus military equipment to pump up Canada’s military and possibly a currency union. Not that I support any of these ideas as such but it would be far more constructive.

[Rumpy]

I learned integrative bargaining when I worked as a retail buyer for several years. In most negotiations, both the buyer and the seller want to get to Yes, and they haggle to define the parameters that both sides consider fair. That was pretty easy when the stakes were just pricing and terms on a seasonal book order, and when you know that you'll be facing the same seller/buyer again in six months. Might be harder when national economies are at stake and one party holds a much stronger hand and the participants periodically get replaced. Even under those conditions, though, it's never a zero-sum game.

Yeah, and I'm sure it helps if the two parties are seeing eye-to-eye and are on the same page.