I witnessed a C-suite narc singlehandedly tank warehouse picking performance for a multimillion dollar logistics company because he thought bin numbers were for wimps.
They also obviously put a floor of 10% on both their fake "calculated" foreign tariff rate, as well as the new US imposed rate. Only the latter of which was actually disclosed by Trump during his silly speech.
It's crazy because on most issues I really just think normal people who aren't glued to the news simply don't have a fucking clue. Like, those people didn't vote for invading Greenland, he didn't campaign on getting rid of due process, etc.
But everyone knew about the tariffs. No excuses here
People didn’t believe he’d do it for some reason. I knew he would because he fancies himself a modern day John D. Rockefeller or J.P. Morgan and wants to return to the days of the robber barons.
They truly have no idea and also have no ability to understand that this is completely batshit, no independent means to overcome the basic tendency to believe that people who have acquired enormous power know what they are doing.
No. They never think anything will affect them. They just wanted HIM. MOST people who voted did not vote for him and more did not vote at all so definitely not FOR HIM.
I don’t argue at all that the logic is nonsense, I’m just saying that the size of a country has absolutely no bearing on its trade balance (relative to total trade) because imports and exports are both proportional to population
like imagine I made super-Denmark by cloning Denmark - or mini-Denmark by shrinking it in half. You’d still be exporting ~2x more than you import from the US.
Sorry it’s just a pedantic point but it’s kinda bugging me 😅
Each Danish citizen needs to get 20 Disney Plus Subscriptions, 30 Prime Subscriptions, 25 Apple TV subscriptions, Microsoft 365, Google Drive, Squarespace and MeUndies now.. by law.
What do you know about this? Catherine Austin Fitts said Trump does what bankers tell him to do. She talks about the US black budget, the missing $21 trillion, the breakaway civilization and what Musk's DOGE is really doing to try to finish implementing the control grid. https://youtu.be/KdBN5lBPHfI
They even can’t do bloody maths, because Australia has had a trade deficit with the US for years aside from one month. Just the most incompetent bunch of addled boors imaginable
we're not asking much here. the penguins just need to pull themselves up by their boot straps and order a few billion$ of surface-to-air missiles from us.
Places like that would likely still end up importing luxury items so long as they also can export enough to be able to do so. Making enough food for the country is different from making enough to be able to export it to other locations
The WH Press Secretary: “To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump,” Leavitt said. “This is a president who is doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term.”
So Canada, which had no additional tariffs today other than those announced already, w 40 million ppl is supposed to import enuf from US to offset our imports of their natural resources.
I mean, if we're paying them with company script, they should be spending it in the company store. Not in some other guy's store. Or worse, hoarding it. I want my money!
Brought to you by the (apparently "exceptional") American Conservative™️ movement. I could almost pity red voters, but nah: enjoy your whirlwind, rubes.
Agree, but on top of the general tragedy they'll suffer, I'm going to make sure Trump voters choke on their drooling, bigoted stupidity every chance I get for the rest of my life.
he is a raving lunatic but let's face it the people around him, enabling him, are far far worse. In a couple years everyone of them will be lying on their resumes that they were never working for trump.
Of the many issues which are available to be had with the second Trump administration, this is one of the big ones: There are no experts. No professionals. Nobody who has any idea of what they're doing. No serious economist would ever come up with something like this.
You would think a global recession would be bad for business and thus Congress, who gets their campaign funding and their investment income from businesses, would start to care and take action to take their power of taxation back.
Every sale Trump ever made was a rip-off: from selling real estate to MAGA-merchandise to the $TRUMP-coin. So for him every sale is a rip-off. That's why he thinks a country with a trade surplus with the US is ripping America off and is 'cheating'.
This is the result of Trump demanding everyone around him sanewash his lunatic ideas because he is incapable of thoughtfully listening to experts and admitting he is wrong about anything.
This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard from a representative of the US government. It's like listening to a 2-year-old who hasn't yet grasped the concept of "fairness", as in "my shirt is too green, it's not fair!" Literally can't distinguish between "I don't like it" and "not fair".
But they are raising the tariff on Lesotho because that country imported less from the USA than the USA bought from Lesotho. Which is totally expected given the relative populations. This is just punishing countries for being small and poor.
Stephen Miran is the chair of the CEA. He is the chief advocate for the “Mar-a-Lago” accords, which is a batshit theory that foreign holders of US debt will agree to exchange their holdings for century bonds.
How the fuck does any politician look at this and not immediately say "That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen?" Congress could end this nightmare right now and they would be seen as heroes by everybody.
That would require the Republicans to have more of a spine than jellyfish, an evolution they seem disinclined to strive for. They're more of the "lay there like a slug" sort of party.
Why are the American people paying the cost of this dumb negotiating tactic? How is the administration going to protect the people from the administration and companies who are going to take advantage of price increases due to ‘tariffs’?
They don’t have the first clue what they’re doing. They’re driving us into a recession bec they’re screwing w/ things they don’t understand. They needed experts instead.
The Wharton School should post a video of Donald Trump's diploma being burned in a tacky little bucket.
"Donald, from here on out, we've never heard of you. Goodbye and good riddance."
Same with Indonesia who aren't even characterized as a developed country. I'm here right now and according to my host, their average salary is equal to $200 a month. How TF could they compete?
Okay, this probably explains how they came up with numbers like Nauru has 59% tariffs on the US so we're putting a 30% tariff on them.
Nauru, a pacific island with a population of 9930 people probably gets a few American tourists every year but sends no tourists here, so there's a trade deficit.
The idea that Trump is being "kind to the world" by imposing tariffs—economic penalties on trading partners—is laughable. This isn’t kindness; it’s economic nationalism wrapped in self-serving rhetoric.
Maybe the most fucked up thing about it is that media will pick up on the fact that this policy was generated by AI, and rubes will tout it as the brilliance of trump / musk using the mystical powers of technology to set policy.
Trump is not being kind. What he is doing is alienating his allies. His tariffs will force other countries to search out other avenues of trade. Other countries will slow down exports to the US which will make things much more expensive. IT is safe to say that Donny is not an expert on economics
Trade deficits with a country divided by exports from that country are called "Trade Deficit Ratio" or "trade deficit intensity ratio". Calling these "tariffs" are grossly misleading. Mass deception (or idiocy) may crater our economy and harm friends. Congress owns taxes and need to step in.
Don't forget Macquarie island. 25% tariff on their exports to USA. It's populated by American and Aus scientists. The only thing they export is USA shipping their OWN equipment back to USA.
I haven’t been able to find any writings by Pierre Yared on tariffs, but there’s a paywalled article about peace being better than war for economic growth from 2010:
For Trump's dream of balanced trade to have a chance of happening would require all the countries in the world to be as rich as the US - how else can poor countries have the same buying power as the richest country in the world? Making the US poorer will help a bit, but a world recession won't...
Translation: His majesty is a benevolent ruler and will not be unduly harsh. His punishments will not be overly cruel to those that repent and seek forgiveness.
Yes, the US Economy and Stock Markets were much better when Peter Navarro was in prison.
Navarro will be remembered in history as a Whack Job Economist with insane Trade Policy Ideas who was Architect of Donald Trump's Economic Depression which will be worse than the 1929 Stock Market Crash.
Cant be sure without seeing the original questions, and they might give different answers if you asked 10 times, but it seems like multiple models are providing this answer. https://bsky.app/profile/dansinker.com/post/3llunnyfeoj2v
I'd also say it doesnt necessarily mean it came from a GenAI, it could mean that this was just the laziest way to do this, and by happenstance the answer that the AI models and Trump's staff hit upon.
Lets call it what it is: THE TRUMP TAX.
I’ll be loading up on products from Canada, UK, EU, Japan, Blue states etc while boycotting products from Republican-led red states - and YES, I will check the labels.
Instead, why not every time you buy something, pay the equivalent price to your rich neighbor. That'll make food so expensive that you stop going To that store. Tell the store owner if he wants to keep you as a customer, he'll have to find some way to pay you, so you have money to buy things.
That's kind of the crossroads we have been forced in to, isn't it? Musk and Trump were both born with gilded pacifiers, and now they are playing with numbers that have never affected them.
It forces us to question whether billionaires are necessary for society.
Tariffs will cause you to buy less from them because it costs more. There is a valid protectionist argument for tariffs. It's not what Trump is doing, and it tends to cost more for everyone, while leading to lower growth. But there is a distorted logic to it.
There is no logic to the assumption that a countries with significantly smaller population should be buying as much from the USA as the USA buys from them and buying less means malfeasance.
I love St. Pierre and Miquelon. Were they named on the list? I would guess they import way more from us than we from them. They do have a fair number of North American trucks and heavy equipment.
"The president is lenient and wants to be kind to the world" is straight-up old-fashioned DEAR LEADER, FRIEND TO ALL CHILDREN propaganda language. Where do the 20-something ding-dongs in the administration even come up with this stuff, old Usenet posts?
That’s why MAGA considers him genius folks. Able to calculate the proper tariff for every nation in the world using only two variables, trade deficit & total trade. Next week he’ll adjust them with the highly anticipated grift multiplier.
That explanation doesn't make sense either. Heard and McDonald Islands are on the list. Permanent human population: 0, economy: 0.
The only import are scientists, for whom the local penguin population pays nothing.
Yet according to this explanation, they have a 20% trade imbalance with the USA.
Trump's mob has all the sophistication of teenagers trying to fly a big passenger plane after training to fly with computer games.
Professional economists can explain why mega-tariffs are a bad idea.
The world economy is an extraordinarily complex dynamic system.
Too complex for a Trump.
Comments
Xi must be popping the champagne corks
I witnessed a C-suite narc singlehandedly tank warehouse picking performance for a multimillion dollar logistics company because he thought bin numbers were for wimps.
So this C-suite narc figured that if he tanked the performance of every warehouse, he wouldn't have to deal with his incompetent nephew.
Trump is like that but on a grant scale.
But everyone knew about the tariffs. No excuses here
I think this applies even if the problem you are addressing does not exist
USA: 330 million people.
Do they really expect us to buy goods at the same rate as we sell to the US?
That doesn’t mean the idea that trade deficits arise due to “cheating”, or are even a bad thing, isn’t absolute nonsense.
So even though we are 1/55th the size of the US, we export twice as much as we import.
According to Trump's "logic" this means that we are ripping off the US and deserve a tariff.
Sorry it’s just a pedantic point but it’s kinda bugging me 😅
(Fun note: medicine is exempt from the tariffs.. even Trump knows not to mess with people's Ozempic, hehe)
They have no clue what they are doing, but FAFO.
Or $8 X blue✔️'s. 😛
https://youtu.be/KdBN5lBPHfI
This is what the country voted for in it's wisdom.
not just a money or population issue
It would likely be a place that doesn't get too cold or too hot if I had to guess. Or a place with advanced agriculture that makes up for bad weather
AM I NOT MERCIFUL?!
Really!? Only a simpleton would believe that.
Laos, 48% tariff, $2066 GDP per capita...
We will never live this down.
They could stop the fascist farce at any time…
You’d be wrong.
A role Trump has been preparing for his whole life.
But not Putin or his favorite places
Also, semantics, but since tariffs happen are collected by the US, it's more accurate to say tariffs happen at the import point.
😮
And if his Wharton professor is to be believed...
All good then…🙄
"Donald, from here on out, we've never heard of you. Goodbye and good riddance."
Nauru, a pacific island with a population of 9930 people probably gets a few American tourists every year but sends no tourists here, so there's a trade deficit.
What
He needs to look at the imbalances on a per capita basis, not just straight numbers
If he did this he’d realize in most cases most other nations buy far more from #usa than #usa does from them
There are brain-dead shithead so-called "economists" pushing exactly these lies, for what actual reason is anyone's guess.
Including Stephen Miran, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-economic-adviser-rejects-short-term-pain-from-tariff-hikes/ar-AA1Bz7d5?item=flightsprg-tipsubsc-v1a?utm_source=milei.news/
Oh except the 3 islands they named that no one other than penguins live on. Even the Penguins are planning a retaliatory surprise though.
Chairman Stephan Miran
Vice chair Pierre Yared
MUTB Professor of international business and senior vice dean at Columbia Business School
Member Kim Ruhl
Professor of economics at University of Wisconsin-Madison
https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-REB-8842
(From https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2025/02/trump-taps-uw-madison-professor-skeptical-of-tariffs-to-executive-council)
That's fucking HILARIOUS...
Also with the economy being so unstable ain't nobody going to make substantial capital investments into onshore production capacity...
Well gives anybody who was thinking of going into Economics some institutions to avoid like the plague...
screw up a one car funeral!!!
It’s the net trade deficit / American exports?
So again. He wants a zero bilateral trade deficit with every country?
Is he doing the actual trade or just goods? And not services?
The trade deficit / their exports.
Navarro will be remembered in history as a Whack Job Economist with insane Trade Policy Ideas who was Architect of Donald Trump's Economic Depression which will be worse than the 1929 Stock Market Crash.
https://bsky.app/profile/wwwojtekk.bsky.social/post/3llunpoz2h22j
I’ll be loading up on products from Canada, UK, EU, Japan, Blue states etc while boycotting products from Republican-led red states - and YES, I will check the labels.
It forces us to question whether billionaires are necessary for society.
And I'd have suggested that BEFORE this shit show rolled into town, this just serves to solidify that opinion.
If someone is buying less from you than you are from them, stop buying so much from them...
Isn't trade imbalance just "the free market deciding"
How this will go: "Well, hows about you go fuck yourself"
They're already whining about US weapons manufacturers getting excluded from tenders in the EU...
Meanwhile we bleed out on the floor.
The only import are scientists, for whom the local penguin population pays nothing.
Yet according to this explanation, they have a 20% trade imbalance with the USA.
A US military base??? 🤯
Professional economists can explain why mega-tariffs are a bad idea.
The world economy is an extraordinarily complex dynamic system.
Too complex for a Trump.