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... Even... if Trump... can bring in $1 trillion... somehow...
US stock markets have wiped out $ 9 trillion in market cap since Trump became President.
.... So uh. Yeah.
1 - 9 is -8, Don.
Great plan.
That $1 trillion he's claiming also comes from the pockets of Americans, so it's more like - 1 - 9 = - 10.
I am trying to give him a delusional level of benefit of thr doubt in thinking that some fucking how these tariffs actually result in 1 trillion in new US manufacturing industries/investments.
Even by his own... """"logic"""" ... his plan makes no fucking sense.
Of course yes, in reality... it makes even less sense, because you don't get new manufacturing in a very high cost of living country without extremely well thought out industrial policy, subsidies, ways to attract needed talent, and investment, and ... you get it.
This man hasn't deserved the benefit of the doubt for at least 40 years
Yep, but unfortunately it's not going to matter how much manufacturing relocates to the US. The rest of the world is now starting to boycot US products en masse. Some countries are even banning investment into the US. And travel to the US is declining. So their trade deficit is going to get far worse.
On top of that, there was news yesterday that Trump removed the ban on the use of "forever chemicals, " like PFAS. So that'll mean some US products won't be allowed to be imported into other countries.
Yep. Im a US citizen, we are so beyond fucked it is actually funny, at least a third of the population are in a hardcore fascist cult of personality, our media is dominated by idiots gargling the balls of even more powerful and even more stupid idiots.
If anyone wants to do a sham marriage, I'd love to be able to leave.
I got basically crippled in an assault and now live off of SSDI. If Soc Security gets gutted further... I'm fucked, on the streets homeless, in a wheelchair.
I mean he covers that in the article. He straight says the tariffs will bring in money and then the new manufacturing will bring in more on top of that:
Those tariffs next year will make us $1 trillion, in addition to the $1 trillion thousands of companies are going to relocate back into the United States,
I still genuinely am not sure if he legitimately understands tariffs. Like, surely he knows they are paid by the importer. He has to right? But time and time and time again he says that other countries will pay the money. I'm assuming he's just lying but I can't even tell anymore.
Regardless this $1 trillion he's claiming are absolutely just a tax on Americans.
It's like the wall, really. But so much bigger, as big as it is reshaping global trade. Like the wall, it will never become a reality, except in some specific parts of the border. Well, some specific parts of the USA economy will still work, the American consumer market is irreplaceable in some extent, for now.
I would think regular Americans are already being affected by this?
He is acting like there is basically perfectly inelastic demand for Americans to pay for imports and importers to pay the tariffs.
Elasticity is basically how demand changes in accordance with price.
Generally speaking, absolute necessities like food, water, housing... are less elastic than unneccesary luxuries.
... But... basically nothing is perfectly in elastic.
If anything was, the price could literally be either infinite, or totally free... and demand would not change.
Obviously that is nonsense. Even if you die without food, demand will drop if a meal costs a billion dollars.
Trump is acting like the US is so lucrative a market that... our volume of imports will be... the same... and ... the importers just have infinite money to pay tariffs... and not do cost pass thru to consumers.
Even though every economist since the 1700s will tell you tariffs result in less imports, and higher prices for consumers.
He seems to genuinely think he is directly taxing other countries, when he is... just taxing American consumers and importers.
Its like when Elon got mad at advertisers leaving twitter and he threatened to sue them for... not buying his ad service.
These coddled corrupt criminal capitalists have gotten so used to just always getting their way... that they've broken fundamental underlying concepts of how the 'free market' works.
Their worldviews are internally inconsistent and do not make sense, they hold fundamentally contradictory ideas simultaneously, and when people point this out, they flail and bitch and moan and insult like the petulant spoiled brats they are, because facing the contradiction, resolving the cognitive dissonance would cause ego death... which is the same as suicide for a megalomaniacal narcissist.
For them, it is literally:
I can't be wrong.
Ergo, everyone else is.
Even though every economist since the 1700s will tell you tariffs result in less imports, and higher prices for consumers.
That's the plan:
https://unherd.com/2025/02/why-trumps-tariffs-are-a-masterplan/
Varoufakis is wrong.
Central to this new global order (Trump's plan) would be a cheaper dollar that remains the world’s reserve currency — this would lower US long-term borrowing rates even more.
What Trump is doing will result in a cheaper dollar.
It was also destroy the USD as the world's reserve currency.
wall of text further explanation so as not to clutter the thread
The USD has been the reserve currency because:
Huge, growing, stable economy.
Low debt to GDP ratio.
Very, very willing to cooperate with international trade deals.
Powerful military that can enforce its will as a hegemon.
Many deals with many oil producing countries who agree to only sell their exported oil via USD.
... all of these except the last are as seen in statistical comparison to other countries. Its all about comparative advantages.
Not sure if you haven't noticed, but all of those are now rapidly crumbling, after a last 2 decades of slower, more incremental decline.
But ultimately, all of those things could be smoothed over by a reasonable presentation of trustworthiness and reliability generally.
Trump has utterly destroyed all of that now.
...
If Varoufakis were citing some kind of Project 2025 masterplan for this, I'd be more inclined to believe his read on the situation here is at least Trump's plan.
But even then, it still won't work as he describes.
Trump is acting with unimaginable hubris, his actions will destroy the USD as a world reserve currency, rapidly accelerate other countries looking for regional or possibly international alternatives, and as a result, less people will need to use dollars for trade, there will thus be less demand for US debt.
Less demand means we have to offer higher yields, higher interest rates on our debt, as the us dollar weakening means the real price of debt goes down.
Varoufakis may be correct in that this is what Trump will try to do, but I see no evidence that... the plan has actually been thought out that far by any actual administration or adjacent thinkers.
Beyond that, this plan won't work.
We are acting like a rogue nation doing economkc terrorism to literally the whole world... other than basically Russia and Israel.
China, Japan and South Korea have recently entered into a pact, an agreement, to coordinate their responses of retaliatory tariffs.
Please take a moment to appreciate how insane that is.
The past ... since ww2, SK and JPN have firmly been in the US's sphere of economic influence and military collaboration.
They just fucking noped out of that the economic part of that and made a pact with China.
Japan is now rapidly trying to militarize and there are even talks of starting their own nuclear program.
Please, again, appreciate how fucking insane it is that the most anti nuclear weapons country on Earth is now maybe rethinking that.
Most other world leaders are not stupid. They know Trump will try to do piecemeal, one on on negotiations.
They are already forming into blocs to resist this tactic.
There's talk of Canada joining or at least much more seriously integrating with the EU.
NATO is now basically defunct in all but paper only, the EU is finally 'shouldering its burden of defense costs', but uh, they're working on an EU Army, that doesn't involve the US, after Trump repeatedly threatens to acquire Greenland, and has totally betrayed Ukraine.
The EU is also rapidly pivoting away from being reliant on or using US software solutions.
These actual adults in the room have actual plans to deal with the US, and they have been enacted astonishingly rapidly given how comprehensive they are.
... The rest of the world does not need us anywhere near as much as Trump does, as much as Varoufakis estimates Trump thinks they do.
This article has been posted by me several times. You are only the second person who notices. The US cannot have it all. I think Varoufakis just doesn't want to be the one who delivers the message. He must have known better.
I don't fully agree with your outlook. The companies are not massively objecting. I think the concept has already been discussed by key people, in the US and internationally. Like Japan is prepared to build a nuclear bomb and Britain was prepared for Brexit, the big companies are prepared for decoupling from China.
This article has been posted by me several times. You are only the second person who notices.
Probably because I am one of the few people on lemmy that actually has a degree in Economics.
EDIT
jammed the rest in spoiler tags for the thread's sake
Granted, just a BSc, but I got it during and after the 07 08 financial crash in the US, and remember arguing with my PhD professors that uh actually, the fact that Iceland just literally jailed all their bankers and did not bail them out... and then their economy just suffered a moderate down turn, instead of a complete collapse, meant that their whole reasoning behind 'we have to bail out the banks and do QE, there is no other way' ... well here is a case study that disproves your model.
The US cannot have it all. I think Varoufakis just doesn't want to be the one who delivers the message. He must have known better.
I get that he is attempting to explain what he thinks the real plan is, and he's done a decent job of theory crafting...
But he is wrong. There is no hidden well thought out plan.
The people in the Trump admin are unqualified, uncoordinated morons. They are only there because they are loyal to Trump.
It is chaos. Not 12D chess.
Varoufakis, and you, are sane-washing the Trump regime. You both cannot comprehend something this tumultuous would occur without some reasoning behind it.
There is none, at least none that is coherent and makes any sense.
These people are dangerous megalomaniacal idiots who failed upward because of nepotism and corruption.
They are idiots, as are the Americans who voted them in.
There is no silver lining to this.
America is now as corrupt and broken and oligsrchichal as Russia, if not more.
I don't fully agree with your outlook. The companies are not massively objecting.
Please give me some examples of any companies based outside of the US who are doing anything other than cowering in fear and issuing statements that amount to 'We believe in Donald Trump's plan, we love Trump, please don't hurt us, please give us a tariff carve out, we'll bribe you.'
I genuinely have no idea what you're talking about.
Even domestic US companies are going fucking nuts.
I think the concept has already been discussed by key people, in the US and internationally. Like Japan is prepared to build a nuclear bomb and Britain was prepared for Brexit, the big companies are prepared for decoupling from China.
Are you just stating your opinion?
Britain was not prepared for Brexit, and it was a disaster.
The US is currently trying to do... WorldExit, just fuck over our capacity to trade not just with the EU, but the entire fucking world.
It will be a much larger disaster.
What big US companies have plans to just somehow not use any imports from China?
What are you talking about?
We do not have the capacity to source the needed materials internally, at comparable prices.
The only plan there could be would be basically 'fire half our workers, pare down operations to the bone, focus on core competencies, pray to baby jesus that somehow this nightmare all ends.'
Britain always had bad news about the EU in the newspapers. Their population was never fully committed so it was possible to create a majority against the membership.
Likewise US companies will regularly discuss what they will do when China is going to overtake them. That moment has come. I don't believe in the coincidence that the US is doing its biggest blunder at the most crucial time of their history.
Of course, the strategy can be that half the workers are fired, but with the expectation that they are hired by somebody else.
Well, it is a stupid question. A real journalist would ask how much more pain he's willing to let the American people tolerate for his poorly disguised reverse pump and dump scheme
Trump bankrupted a casino, is anyone surprised he's doing the same to America.
His motives may be unclear, but his actions are crystal clear. He’s tried to enact tariffs already and been stopped before they were implemented because everyone knows the level of damage they cause. He’s moving forward this time. He’s deliberately crashing the global economy.
Why? Who knows? His Silicon Valley overlords demand it? I doubt it’s Putin, because Russia’s economy is hanging on by a thread, and the last thing they need is a global downturn, especially when it craters oil prices. Is it just that Trump is stupid, maybe senile, and ultimately in charge?
Regardless, the leader of the biggest economy in the world has decided that it’s time for a global recession/depression, so unless that course is changed, that’s probably what’s going to happen.
His motives are always crystal clear. Ego. He wants people to grovel and beg for exceptions. He wants to feel powerful. The fact that mainstream news won't say so is likely predicted on not wanting to be banned from the press pool like the AP was.
The government and media have a mutually parasitic relationship. The government uses the media to spread and reinforce their propaganda, while the media's jobs are made much easier by having direct and ostensibly willing access to the people in government. If they want access, the media has to play ball. The rules seem to be unwritten, like their own little interwoven social contract. The result being that they've mostly become pushovers when some Orange Jackass comes along to play dictator and burn the country to the ground in pursuit of his own aggrandizement.
It's all plans from the '30s. Canada, the US, Mexico, Greenland, dismantling democracy to install technocrats, crashing the economy to bring back company towns - none of it is new, it's just being implemented in a nonsensical and incompetent way, so it seems random
It's not a good plan to start with, but there is a plan... One the oligarchs bought into, but without understanding how the plan was meant to be enacted
Wanna ask Trump if he'll still be alive by the time American manufacturing makes his tariffs pay off
How long did it take China to build itself into a self-sufficient superpower that produced goods for the world?
Around 50 years, with a tight rein on the population and a leadership that had consistency and a 30, 50 and 100 year vision that they continually executed against.
Even in the best case scenario of everybody rallying behind Trump and pulling together behind a single strategy that miraculously turns out to work, Trump will be dead in 30 years or less.
So HE probably isn’t realistically thinking this, even if it’s what he’s decided to tell everyone this week.
One thing about Trump: I do believe that underneath it all, he does want to make America a great nation. He’s just ignorant of how to do that or what it would even look like when achieved.
Great points.
One thing about Trump: I do believe that underneath it all, he does want to make America a great nation. He’s just ignorant of how to do that or what it would even look like when achieved.
I don't think he does. I think he wants to make it a better place for him, and he doesn't get any further than that as a concept.
Being a narcissist, I don’t think he differentiates between making it great and making it great for him.
He does, because he sees the world as a zero sum game. For him to prosper, others have to suffer.
China's growth is not a story of self-sufficiency.
It is a story of doing state directed capitalism, making extensive use of international trade, much more productively, intentionally, and strategically competently than... basically any other economy in the history of the post ww2 world.
They are not self-sufficient in the sense of autarky, a hermit kingdom like North Korea with 0 international trade.
Vietnam basically 80s onward, is a similar economic story of a 'Communist' government/society/economy that did a good job of introducing elements of capitalistic economic systems into itself gradually, with great control, and much of its profits siphoned into further reforms and building up public services and infrastructure.... lots of international trade in all that, though they have been significantly less restrictive of foreign direct investment than China has.
... So is Japan, post ww2, minus the 'Communist' starting position, though with a good deal more foreign direct investment.
A free market republican/libertarian who learned how large of a role the government of Japan played in directly molding the evolution of its industries and manipulating its markets, openly, would call it 'communist', because they think 'communism is when the government does stuff'.
In reality, its state directed capitalism, but in Japan, they call this capitalism, in Vietnam and China, they call this same thing communism.
Their political systems and culture are all very different, but their economic organization and growth patterns actually have a lot in common.
China does capitalism, its just that the state explicitly owns the largest corporations. But these corporations are still ultimately playing the same capitalism game as all other corps... they just have a lot more subsidies from and control by the state/Party officials.
I do believe that underneath it all, he does want to make America a great nation.
I gave W that credit. I don't believe it's true for Trump, outside of the fully narcissistic version.
It appears his first priority is pleasing Putin. His second is getting a small number of people to applaud him. He doesn't give a single fuck about America or Americans as a whole.
Don't forget Krasnov Trump bankrupted his casinos. Only he knows why he is bankrupting US now.
I don't get it. If your position is that a temporary downturn is necessary then the question seems very sensible. And somehow Trump says it is necessary but asking about the maximum extent he'd go for is very stupid?
It's not supposed to be temporary. They want to destroy the economy. They want to destroy the entire system that FDR started. They want to tear down the US and their Western allies, that's their true goal, and create something like Praxis in its place, a supposed libertarian paradise where every city and piece of land is controlled by a Corporation that has judicial and executive power over one territory, a fiefdom.
It's technofeudalism, a form of facism,
https://theplotagainstamerica.com/
https://time.com/6092844/peter-thiel-power-biography-the-contrarian/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-feudalism
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technofeudalism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
This also ties with Greenland,
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/16/spiritual-case-greenland-trump-00198848
The Heritage Foundation, famous for Project 25, has its interests aligned with the technofeudalists because this measure will give enormous power to the Churches, which in essence are nothing more than Corporations too.
Opus Dei is one of the groups behind the Heritage Foundation's Project 25, whose current president is Kevin Roberts, who has an extensive history of involvement with American Catholic organizations.
Here you can see Kevin Roberts speech at CIC (Opus Dei Headquarters on K Street, Washington DC) last year,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqgfhZpRZhg
Peter Thiel himself has connections to the Opus Dei,
https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/the-final-conversations-of-a-dying-priest
https://www.project2025.observer/
And if you, my reader, still think this will be good for your small or medium-sized business. Remember. In a world where Corporations are Kingdoms, new entrepreneurs are separatists. They will be crushed.
It's very simple. His position is that whatever he does is perfect. If he openly considers the impacts of temporarily weakening the economy, and the consequences that go with retirees losing their homes, for example, he will have to admit imperfection. And he's such a narcissist that he's incapable of that. He can allude to some possible temporary badness as long as he doesn't overly focus on it.
At the same time, because of his broken brain and his narcissism, facts are not facts. Everything is an opinion. Therefore, the reporter was expressing an opinion through their question, and they should have known that his opinion is more important than theirs.
Sometimes very intelligent people don't understand stupid questions. BUT sometimes, VERY STUPID people can't understand basic questions.
Ask him if he is willing to give up mar-a-lago to save the American people. Or is he only willing to sacrifice what doesn't belong to him.
I think the answer is none, hence why he never paid contractors, and sold himself to Russia when he went under
Trump isn't going to feel any of that economic pain and neither is his husband, Elon Musk. If eggs are $300 a dozen, they will still have full bellies.
Make America 1929 again
Make america great depression again
"necessary to reverse decades of “stupid leadership.”" - Four years of which HE was in charge - or in HIS brain eight, seeing as he still believes he won the election before this one.