Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/09/trump-announces-90-day-tariff-pause-for-at-least-some-countries.html

by bhouston • 1 year ago

720 1337 1 year ago

cnbc.com

bhouston• 1 year ago

If anyone had advanced warning, you could have made a fortune today:

https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-...

sigwinch2• 1 year ago

Learned their lesson and formed a whole new Signal group.

carabiner3• 1 year ago

I bought VOO and AMZN yesterday. First time buying an individual stock since pandemic. Kicking myself for not buying more. Still waiting a week to possibly buy more if there's another shock, but if the market's up, I'll buy less.

ackbar03• 1 year ago

That's stock speculation for you, everything you do is wrong in retrospect

outer_web13• 1 year ago

Be careful with Amazon, the algos seem to have not realized China is still being tariffed.*

* Observation valid for the next 30 seconds. Certain restrictions apply.

bgirard• 1 year ago

Lots of stocks are up 10-15% instantly after this announcement. Curious if we'll get reports of suspicious options volume capitalizing on this information.

NooneAtAll3• 1 year ago

why do people still trust stock markets if manipulating them is that easy?

dboreham2• 1 year ago

Well I bought this morning (not a large trade), based not on insider information but on the obvious outcome. Also the dynamic signal that Trump spent 2h spewing utter nonsense at a donor dinner last night, but the market didn't go down this morning. Signaling that something was in the works one way or another.

Edit: best to note that Trump is still doing plenty to destroy the US economy, so be careful out there.

matteoraso2• 1 year ago

Wouldn't be too suspicious, since Trump people told people to buy into the stock market before announcing this.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1143082727259...

Vivtek2• 1 year ago

Who would report it?

jajuuka• 1 year ago

I'm sure this will be a talking point for the next couple years. "I caused the biggest surge in the stock market in 5 years."

codedokode5• 1 year ago

I think he prefers a phrase "in American history ever".

0x5f3759df-i• 1 year ago

Like if the president had posted that “now is a great time to buy DJT” 15 minutes before announcing the pause?

AnotherGoodName• 1 year ago

Spy went from 497 to 505 by 1:05pm (announcement was later at 1:18pm). Then onwards to 530+.

Clearly some listened or simply had knowledge the announcement was coming.

BJones122• 1 year ago

Regardless of whatever happened today, it's never a good time to buy $DJT because 1) it's not profitable and 2) holders are slowly continually liquidating in a complicated manner explained by past Money Stuff articles.

dboreham2• 1 year ago

Actually you did have advance warning because there has been several days of wall-to-wall finance bro and republican heads on TV saying the tariffs were batshit crazy. Under those conditions there are only two outcomes: 1. the tariffs were rolled back or 2. Trump is removed from office (and the tariffs rolled back).

prisenco• 1 year ago

Those aren't guaranteed. I do believe Trump is in danger of being removed if the economic damage of the tariffs becomes too great since the one thing truly sacrosanct in America is the economy.

But the timeline would hardly be immediate. We'd have to go through considerable pain before the government would act.

readthenotes12• 1 year ago

3. Carve outs are made for high dollar donors like AAPL (which went up with everything else even though it is now subject to an even more terrific tariff)

Trump's whole schtick was that #1 - - get countries to negotiate.

Except China. The USA gets 25% of it's bandages from there, and that's no way to prepare to defend Taiwan.

whalesalad• 1 year ago

By the same token, 24 hours and a tweet can have it all come crashing down once again. Nothing is real anymore.

gorgoiler• 1 year ago

The first order fraud would be market manipulation run by the commander in chief.

The second order play would be for Trump to tip his associates off that he was going to do this and let them profit handsomely from the bump. Congratulations Mr President: your lackies love you because they profited from fraud but moreover you now have grade A kompromat on all of them in the form of your Signal chat records showing they were complicit in market fraud!

Terr_3• 1 year ago

Remember how every other President put their assets into a blind trust?

Shit like this is why! It deterred them from firebombing the entire goddamn economy to make a buck for their friends and followers!

fragmede4• 1 year ago

Jimmy Carter's peanut farm remembers.

WillAdams2• 1 year ago

I remember how Jimmy Carter had to sell the family farm because it was viewed as a potential conflict of interest and how Mitt Romney's father, when making his run, when asked for a single year of tax returns made them all public, arguing that a single year could easily be manipulated to show anything, and that only by seeing the entirety of multiple years could an accurate evaluation be made.

grandempire9• 1 year ago

Trump is already a billionaire and is in his 70s. No explanation of his behavior in terms of gaining money makes sense.

JasserInicide• 1 year ago

I remember when presidents used to divest themselves of their private holdings. That went out the window in 2017

chevman• 1 year ago

Learn about limit and stop loss orders, come in handy in times of high volatility I am finding :)

thrownaway561• 1 year ago

when the market dropped 1100 points in a day was the time to buy. Buy the DIP!!!

mnky9800n• 1 year ago

Always buy the dip. Because if the dip keeps dipping long enough you got other problems to deal with.

outer_web13• 1 year ago

Uh if tariffs weren't paused it would have kept dipping.

JKCalhoun4• 1 year ago

Catch the falling knife!

SpicyLemonZest7• 1 year ago

Notably, there was a headline that went viral on Twitter earlier this week that the White House was considering this, but after they denied it it was widely understood at the time to be fake news. How many of the people spreading it, I wonder, knew it was really true?

cm2187• 1 year ago

Probably lots of happy white house staffers and congressmen today.

kart23• 1 year ago

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1143082727259...

THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!

- @realDonaldTrump today at 6:37 AM PST

java-man3• 1 year ago

How is this legal??

lysace5• 1 year ago

My dream scenario: The rest of the world would band together and upper the mininum tariffs levels against US imports to 10% for 90 days.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 1 year ago

My dream remains a global common market

timewizard2• 1 year ago

Without global regulation? I think you'd need a lot of luck to survive in that environment.

Even with global regulation. I think it would take a decade to do what the federal governments could otherwise do in a year. The EU is an instructive example here.

SpicyLemonZest7• 1 year ago

The fundamental problem is that tariffs are a tax on the citizens of the country that charges them. Retaliatory tariffs that are high enough or specific enough to shape immediate consumption decisions can move the needle (which is why you do see such responses happening). A universal 10% tariff can affect its target in the long term, but as a short term measure it does nothing but take money out of the pockets of local businesses.

doener2• 1 year ago

[flagged]

rvnx3• 1 year ago

I'm tired of winning.

p_ing• 1 year ago

At least I'm "winning" my 401k and stock portfolio back...

Sigh

doener2• 1 year ago

No, we have to keep winning. We have to win moooore!

slashdev4• 1 year ago

Textbook. His textbook. Art of the deal.

He's not unstable, just very aggressive. He did have a plan.

We can argue about the merits of his plan, but dismissing him and his advisors as stupid or insane is underestimating them.

margalabargala• 1 year ago

Exactly. He has run a lot of businesses in the past, with consistent results. When running the US, he'll apply similar strategies, and we'll have a similar result.

llm_nerd3• 1 year ago

It is absolutely not textbook. It is massively self-destructive. In no universe is this a win.

This is a retreat by Trump. It's him losing. It makes him look like a joke. Or, more correctly, more like a joke.

Trump desperately wants tariffs. He thinks they're free money. He has been saying this for years and still people desperately try to sane wash it into some masterful 4D chess. The only reason this laughable 90-day pause happened is because the US house of cards is on the precipice of absolute collapse, so Trump had to bow into Bessent's attempts to turn this into some sort of China containment.

So are all those factories coming back...or aren't they? Are tariffs going to replace income tax, or aren't they? Something something war with China. Just absolute insanity by a group of charlatans, self dealers and clowns who have no idea what they're doing.

ceejayoz3• 1 year ago

His textbook. Art of the deal.

It ain't his. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Schwartz_(writer)

We can argue about the merits of his plan, but dismissing him and his advisors as stupid or insane is underestimating them.

Pretending the man didn't repeatedly bankrupt his own companies and stiff his vendors is underestimating him. We've decades worth of knowledge about how "his plan" goes.

outer_web13• 1 year ago

Wait what's been accomplished except huge losses for people trading behind the curve?

martinky24• 1 year ago

How can anyone take him seriously on this sort of stuff? He flip/flops constantly. If he isn't a serious negotiator, other countries/companies aren't going to take his threats seriously.

lysace5• 1 year ago

*How can anyone take the US seriously?

Also see: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yrr0e7499o

Confidence in the US economy is plummeting as investors dumped government debt amid growing concerns over the impact of Donald Trump's tariffs.
Governments sell bonds - essentially an IOU - to raise money from financial markets for public spending and in return they pay interest.
The US does not normally see high interest rates on its debt as its bonds are viewed as a safe investment, but on Wednesday rates spiked sharply to touch 4.5%

jeetoid• 1 year ago

Any reasonable person does.

meepmorp• 1 year ago

How can anyone take the US seriously?

we can wipe out humanity if we get cranky

BLKNSLVR3• 1 year ago

But he's also brought the whole of the US down to the mud that he enjoys fighting in.

The US shouldn't be taken seriously any more, world wide. Trump, and his Project 2025 conspirators, have proven that the US system of government had a loophole, and have taken full advantage of it to perform a hostile take over.

US soft-power was what allowed the US to dictate US law to other countries. US law doesn't even mean anything in the US itself, so the rest of the world should be suddenly ignoring a whole bunch of historic US-pressured behaviours.

Given the deportation discussions, I'd say one of the first things to go would be extradition treaties. I'm hoping copyright duration madness retracts entirely back within US borders as well.

matteoraso2• 1 year ago

Doesn't help America as much as some people might think. The world has seen that Trump is erratic, and America imports too much from China to just ignore the 125% (!!!) tariff on the country.

linguae2• 1 year ago

Exactly. The damage has been done; the fact that economic policy could dramatically change day-by-day makes investing and planning very difficult. In addition, the tariffs on China are insane.

One of my biggest concerns is the value of the dollar. If foreigners are discouraged from doing business with America either due to tariffs or due to other matters, how does this affect the dollar, which is a fiat currency? The US dollar is currently the world's reserve currency, which is the result of the United States' emerging victorious from WWII while Britain, holder of the world's previous reserve currency (the pound), had to contend with rebuilding as well as dealing with the loss of its empire. Fiat currencies, by definition, are not backed by assets, but are instead backed by "faith"; not in the religious sense, but in the faith that people have in the government issuing the currency. How will the world keep the faith if the custodian of the dollar acts so recklessly?

For many years I've been concerned about deficit spending and easy-money policies from central banks. However, for the past few months I've become very concerned about Trump's policies that alienate our allies and partners. What Trump and the rest of MAGA simply do not understand is that the United States is part of an interconnected world. American strength is more than just weaponry; it's also in our economy and our reputation.

Unfortunately Trump and his cabinet have done extraordinary damage to our nation in less than three months. He's like an angry man with a baseball bat smashing up irreplaceable artifacts in a museum, and sadly there is no police to stop him, because he is the chief of police. He is by far the worst president America has ever had to endure, and if this continues our nation will end up at war, either with itself or with other nations.

tines• 1 year ago

America will get the outcome it deserves.

misantroop4• 1 year ago

Trump couldn't care less about America. He treats the presidency as his private business. This was all a ploy to make a lot of money, nothing else.

loevborg• 1 year ago

The Chinese are warning their citizens about travel to the U.S.

China issued an alert warning its citizens and students of the potential risk of traveling in the U.S. and attending schools there. > “Recently, due to the deterioration of China-US economic and trade relations and the domestic security situation in the United States, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism reminds Chinese tourists to fully assess the risks of traveling to the United States and be cautious,” the ministry said in an alert.

Can't blame them honestly

gmuslera• 1 year ago

The citizens of other countries should be concerned too. Even short term plans could end badly for some disruptive measure Trump because whatever, as he did basically every week since he got in charge.

mtremsal• 1 year ago

Many EU countries have done the same in recent weeks. This is less about putting diplomatic pressure, and more about warning people to avoid traveling to the US due to real danger.

pb72• 1 year ago

There is no real danger so this is mostly diplomatic pressure.

arandomusername19• 1 year ago

Nope, all those warnings were basically "make sure your paperwork/visa is in order" and "gender on passport has to be the one assigned on birth"

sebtron• 1 year ago

Multiple European countries have issued travel warnings for the US too.

arandomusername19• 1 year ago

Travel warnings like "make sure your paperwork is in order" yeah?

seanmcdirmid10• 1 year ago

I have a trip to China on Saturday and I'm worried about:

a. Chinese retaliation. I don't think they are going to start arresting Americans, but it might get uncomfortable if I don't have my passport in the subway station.

b. American retaliation. My wife has a greencard, this is actually worrying me more than anything, although as far as I have heard so far, we should be OK.

Trip is still on. I'm really interested in how China has changed since I left 8 years ago.

silexia• 1 year ago

Totalitarian countries like China and Russia routinely arrest American visitors to use them as negotiation chips. Be careful.

NewJazz2• 1 year ago

Hmm curious that they gutted SEC before pulling this nonsense rather than afterward.

outer_web13• 1 year ago

I think the DOJ handles these things. Oh, also gutted. And also it doesn't matter because immunity.

davidw3• 1 year ago

One thing companies love is lots of uncertainty like this. It keeps their accountants entertained! "Maybe we should build a factory in the US" ... 24 hours later ... "well, not today".

What's really amazing is all the muttering from "Very Important Wall Street" type people who are saying that he's insane. Like... with that kind of salary, weren't you paying attention? We've known he wasn't right in the head for a while now. Maybe they should be replaced by AI.

thrance4• 1 year ago

It's a confirmation to those that still needed it that finance people are stupid and ideologically blinded. Trump's been speaking of tariffs for years, what made them think his mandate would be good for them?

vkou3• 1 year ago

They always knew he was an idiot, the reason they are muttering is to give ammunition and support to anyone who will push back on this insanity.

valzam• 1 year ago

Absolutely no one was seriously considering building a factory in the US based on the insansity of last week

timewizard2• 1 year ago

Thailand is a good example. They have about $40b (USD) in balance of trade going the wrong way. Their initial ideas were simply to import more american petroleum, vehicles and aircraft. This likely could have accounted for more than half the difference and significantly reduced their tariff rate by just changing suppliers of already imported products.

The US news is pretty useless here. It's more nuanced than they would like to admit. Foreign sources of news are the most instructive as they're actually covering the options realistically.

midtake• 1 year ago

The market is huge. Absolutely someone was considering it. Whether they had time to put plans in motion is a separate matter altogether.

davidw3• 1 year ago

That was part of the entire purported purpose of this lunacy. They went on TV and everything about having people operating robots screwing in iphone screws and stuff.

Whether anyone bought into it is another matter, but opening factories is part of what they said they wanted.

UncleMeat2• 1 year ago

The number of people who are paid to be "professional knower of things" and "professional predictor of things" who are now saying "I never could have predicted that Trump would do something as crazy as this" is just baffling.

In a sane world all these people would be ignored by media outlets moving forward.

davidw3• 1 year ago

The media outlets are part of the problem. Lots of sanewashing and "both sides". Many of them also love "CEO says a thing" articles where they act as stenographers. You see that with a certain car company's wild promises.

croes6• 1 year ago

In a sane world Trump wouldn’t be president

nitwit005• 1 year ago

I sold my stocks just barely in advance of this whole debacle. I remain confused that it wasn't already priced in by that point. I am not a savvy investor by any standard.

tombert3• 1 year ago

At this point, I do wonder if long-dated (2-3 months) American-style Puts are a good idea.

The weirdness of this administration has created a lot of volatility. With American-style options you are allowed to exercise early, so if you think there's going to be a ton of ups and downs in the next few months, I wonder if this could be lucrative.

I might try this just as an experiment with one of the cheaper options.

fortran77• 1 year ago

The only way to know is to wait 3 months and see.

hervature• 1 year ago

Exercising early only makes sense in some pathological examples that do occur but practically never happen. In general, very loosely, a put is worth something for the hedge plus the amount you could get for exercising it right now. Thus, if you want to exercise it right now, you just sell it and get the hedge premium.

Also, the current VIX is the same as January of 2020. If you believe the current state of the world is less certain than the outbreak of a global pandemic, I have some options to sell you.

d0odk• 1 year ago

You can just sell the options. You don't need to exercise.

Aperocky• 1 year ago

Given my exposure I've loaded up with long puts right after this news.

Puts are a necessary hedge now for your 401ks or stock grants.

keeganpoppen• 1 year ago

i doubt you're the first person to think of this. not to be an "it's priced in" guy, but... something to consider

CamperBob2• 1 year ago

They knew he was a moron. Their mistake was thinking he was their moron.

JeremyNT2• 1 year ago

If I had any appreciable assets in the stock market OTHER than my retirement savings, I would sell like hell right now.

The market is absolutely delusional right now. It's not pricing in how devastating this general uncertainty is, nevermind the fact that massive tariff hikes are still in effect.

whatever1• 1 year ago

The stable solution to this problem is infinite tariffs everywhere.

But then these are politicians they will declare 2*infinity tariffs.

Vivtek2• 1 year ago

Threaten people with a 49% national sales tax, and suddenly they celebrate when it's only 10%.

sampton• 1 year ago

It also makes it easy for Chinese manufactures to circumvent tariffs. Completely pointless theater for the MAGA crowd.

some_random• 1 year ago

How though? Obviously there will be tariff evasion but doing so at scale is impossible.

layer85• 1 year ago

How so? By lying about the country of origin?

criddell• 1 year ago

Chinese manufacturers don't pay US tariffs, the entities importing the goods do.

tlogan2• 1 year ago

And China which accounts for about 20% of our imports have 130% tariffs.

digianarchist4• 1 year ago

Brings the average rate up to 33%.

anon291• 1 year ago

Well we now know which countries are willing to work with the United States.

johnnyanmac7• 1 year ago

I'm only "celebrating" congress getting more time to reel this chaos in. Hopefully we have 20 pissed off enough GOP senators to realize that they never should have let Trump singlehandedly start yet another tarriff war.

Dylan16807• 1 year ago

It's not like people stopped being mad or are calling this good. Starting with a big number and dropping lower (temporarily!) was not a good negotiating strategy here.

rsynnott7• 1 year ago

Thinking of tariffs as a _sales_ tax, while it seems to be quite popular on this 'ere orange website, is both incorrect and very dangerous. Sales taxes, generally, are paid by the final consumer. Tariffs are paid at point of importation. This makes a big difference; if your factory makes, say, computers, sales tax impacts the (consumer) cost of the computer, but tariffs impact the cost of _all of your imported components_.

ProfessorLayton2• 1 year ago

So we're all in for another ride like this in 3 months? How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?

As nice as this surge is, I'm more focused on upping my cash reserves and bracing myself for a recession.

dayvid• 1 year ago

There's definitely going to be another change before 3 months are up.

amanaplanacanal4• 1 year ago

Yep. He flip flops like a dying fish. There is no way to predict what idea he's going to have 90 days from now.

guelo• 1 year ago

Why cash when inflation is coming?

randunel• 1 year ago

You need liquidity when recessions come. Less liquid assets go for lower than usual since cash is king during those times.

But nobody can predict recessions.

ghaff3• 1 year ago

Cash often refers to Money Market funds and the interest they pay tends to track inflation. There are also ibonds but you can invest a fairly limited amount in them.

muzani5• 1 year ago

Cash can bleed slower than the others, especially if there's stagflation. Liquidity is nice too during uncertain times.

Also nearly 100% tariffs on one of the biggest trading partners is unlikely to hold for very long. There's probably a lot of options because of that.

spacephysics2• 1 year ago

Think the hope and idea is there’s concrete agreements established before the 90 days are up

jwilber• 1 year ago

What makes you think this?

Separate, possibly unrelated question: what was trump’s goal when he created and rug pulled the Trump coin?

netsharc3• 1 year ago

And if he has one of his McDiarrhea's, what's going to stop him from using that newest agreement as toilet paper?

microtonal• 1 year ago

Even if that was the idea, the agreements are worth less than the paper they are written on. He is boo-ing and shredding trade agreements that he made himself during his first term. He says one thing one day and the complete opposite the next day.

SketchySeaBeast2• 1 year ago

The USMCA agreement wasn't worth the paper HE SIGNED on when he decided he wanted to change the terms of that concrete agreement.

Pxtl2• 1 year ago

Oh, like CUSMA/USMCA/T-MEC/NAFTA2? Canada and Mexico say hi.

coldpie6• 1 year ago

How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?

Who cares? Business leaders & the politicians they helped elect are stripping the copper from the country. Whatever's left when they're done is someone else's problem.

ProfessorLayton2• 1 year ago

I care?? Much of my family works in trades, have their own small businesses with employees and are very much subject to tariffs for their supplies. They did not vote for any of this.

steveBK1236• 1 year ago

You should care because uncertainty leads to cancelled & deferred projects, which leads to reduced demand, which leads to reduced jobs.

If I don't know if Trump is literal or serious about re-shoring to normalize trade deficits, or its just a revenue gimmick, or if its all going to be delayed, or negotiated away ... am I moving any production back to the US? No.

Plants are cancelling orders as they are uncertain what the tariff might be by the time goods ship.

Etc.

Burn it all down is not a governing philosophy.

xracy4• 1 year ago

I'm gonna say 'yes, but' instead of 'yes, and'.

Yes, but the big problem is that these same business leaders and politicians are going to be the ones who get first bite at the apple. And so how they plan is going to impact what's left for everyone else.

I don't care because they burned the system to the ground, I care because they're gonna salvage what they need and nothing else.

johnnyanmac7• 1 year ago

Sadly, trickle down economics does work for headwinds. Us private citizens feel the full windfall when the stocks and businesses are down.

We don't necessarily feel it when it's up though. As seen from 2024.

SpicyLemonZest7• 1 year ago

The administration has signaled that they expect to negotiate acceptable balance-of-trade deals with the US's Asian allies over the next few weeks. If that happens, I can see businesses being certain enough to make investments. Until then I'm bracing for a recession too.

re-thc4• 1 year ago

If that happens

How does that help? The steel and auto tariffs are still in place. There are plans on tariffs for other industries. You'll be hit 1 way or another.

scarface_742• 1 year ago

You mean like he railed against the Canada/Mexico trade deal that he negotiated during his first term?

Hikikomori6• 1 year ago

Like wanting EU to drop VAT for US import sales or forcing EU to buy oil/gas/coal. None of that is happening.

mulmen• 1 year ago

I don’t get this take. We already negotiated trade agreements. That’s what got ripped up with all this tariff nonsense. Why would anyone expect the US to respect the next negotiation? The damage here was reputational. That can only be repaired with time. It can’t be negotiated.

petre2• 1 year ago

Sure. Thr only thing certain with a character like him at the helm is interesting times, so brace yourself.

RyanOD• 1 year ago

I'd say you should brace yourself for rides like this for the next 45 months.

dmd• 1 year ago

Aren't you optimistic!

bluGill9• 1 year ago

What makes you think OP will die in 45 months?

Rides like this have happened regularly for longer than I can remember. The details always change, but there is nothing new.

anthomtb• 1 year ago

We are in for this ride, at indefinite intervals, for the next 3.75 years. Well, unless congress grows a collective sack (unlikely) or President Trump comes to his senses on macro economics (past experience suggests this is impossible).

How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?

They cannot. This is how you can tell Trump was never a real businessman, but rather a TV host and a celebutante. I'd venture nearly all major American business, public and private, depend on stability in the American government. Trump's actions make it painfully clear he is not, and never was, really part of the "business" or "deal making" world.

netsharc3• 1 year ago

I joked to a friend that Trump is going to cause a new religion to start. One that makes people pray that today he does what they want (e.g. just shut up and not yell "China, 500% tariffs!")

Or one that makes people pray that one of those cheeseburgers he's been eating finally does something...

the_af• 1 year ago

Well, unless congress grows a collective sack (unlikely) or President Trump comes to his senses on macro economics

We in Argentina feel for you: it's exactly the same for us, replacing Trump with Milei. And with the added humiliation of Milei being a lapdog to Trump.

This phrase of yours "unless congress grows a sack" is exactly how we feel about our own congress in Argentina.

layer85• 1 year ago

It seems unlikely that the next 90 days will remain calm and stable.

seanmcdirmid10• 1 year ago

Ya, I don't know what Trump is going to do in the next 90 days, but it will probably not just be working on his golf game (although we can hope).

tim3339• 1 year ago

The 125% on Chinese imports effective immediately in itself doesn't seem that calm or stable.

Buttons8402• 1 year ago

The President can only legally set tarrifs in an "emergency". Planning tarrifs 90 days out is really stretching the definition--I'm not holding my breath, but maybe the courts will uphold the constitution on this one?

isleyaardvark• 1 year ago

Normally there are rules regarding how long an emergency can last. This is why, I kid you not, the Republican controlled Congress declared there are no more calendar days in this session of Congress. Every day is March 11. So they'll let him do it as long as he likes.

re-thc4• 1 year ago

Planning tarrifs 90 days out is really stretching the definition

Anything that distracts the president from playing golf is an "emergency".

SkyeCA• 1 year ago

I'm more focused on upping my cash reserves and bracing myself for a recession.

I'm doing the same because I'm legitimately in fear of both economic troubles and/or losing my job as a result of all this uncertainty.

I have cut my personal spending to nearly zero aside from essentials and have been hoarding my money. It's the only sensible option when planning for one's future becomes impossible.

scarface_742• 1 year ago

We have nine months of expenses in cash outside of retirement accounts and working up to 12 by the end of next year. But besides that, I’m not changing anything about our investment plans or our travel plans.

I have been in the job market since 1996 and had to find a job both last year and the year before. I’m on my 10th job. None of the fundamentals ever change:

Live below your means so you can take a job that pays less than you are making, keep an emergency fund, keep an updated resume and career document. Also keep an active network and always be interview ready.

Also play the political game at your job and be sure to be in profit centers not cost centers. Market yourself both internally and externally.

ghaff3• 1 year ago

As someone semi-retired, I was already reasonably conservatively invested. When all this kicked off dumped some more equities. Maybe I could have done a bit better waiting. Who knows? I know I’m happy being that much more liquid.

re-thc4• 1 year ago

How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?

Plan on relying less on the US market. Grow customers elsewhere.

VectorLock• 1 year ago

How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?

They're not supposed to. The only people who are planning anything in this scenario are Whitehouse insiders coordinating stock frontrunning from Signal group chats.

https://bsky.app/profile/unusualwhales.bsky.social/post/3lmf...

poormathskills• 1 year ago

Trump tweeted "it's a good time to buy" right before the tariff drop announcement.

jauntywundrkind4• 1 year ago

It'll be "fun" to see all the "negotiations" that happen with other countries, where they offer a crazy array of bribes / emoluments to WH insiders.

Which is perfectly fine, now that we have Executive Order 63, Pausing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Enforcement to Further American Economic and National Security. This is no longer something the DOJ looks for or tracks, with AG Pam Bondi having to sign off on any potential investigations after a 180-day pause.

Trump also all but disbanded the DOJ Public Integrity Section, that watches for public corruption. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/justice-...

thaumasiotes6• 1 year ago

How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?

How did they do it in the past?

Do you believe that, if the environment stays this way, businesses will just cease to exist as a phenomenon?

fifilura3• 1 year ago

focused on upping my cash reserves and bracing myself for a recession.

And exactly there is a recipe for recession. A self fulfilling prophecy.

Not that you are to blame but the reason why politicians usually avoid projecting uncertainty.

palmotea• 1 year ago

How are businesses supposed to plan anything in this environment?

Honestly, that's one thing that makes me happy about these tariffs: big business is used to getting its way, and tariffs are very much not what they wanted. I've enjoyed the articles about Wall Street Billionaires getting mad and feeling helpless.

thrance4• 1 year ago

[flagged]

whimsicalism3• 1 year ago

the lesson to be learned is we are all humans and should get rich together, not to lean further into tit-for-tat anti-globalization.

anigbrowl7• 1 year ago

[flagged]

adamrezich4• 1 year ago

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a very easy game for everyone to win at if everyone cooperates. Unfortunately, everyone doesn't want to cooperate.

It's a good idea to recognize and internalize this, as it's quite inherent to human nature, and won't be going away during any of our lifetimes.

thrance4• 1 year ago

My country is now doing badly just because an impressive gathering of idiots from across the Atlantic voted for an egotistical maniac.

I do not care about turning the other cheek, I want him gone. This will not get fixed until Americans understand that fascism only leads to ruins and suffering.

masijo• 1 year ago

So he's basically gaming the market with insider trading.

CyberDildonics• 1 year ago

Did you expect something else?

cmrdporcupine3• 1 year ago

Great way to get money loving sycophants closer to you and subservient to you and to shut up potential powerful critics.

If you want wealth, stay close to where the secret knowledge is.

thrance4• 1 year ago

He literally did a pump and dump crypto scam on his first day in office. That he is a scam artist only motivated by personal wealth and power gain is obvious to any and all remaining sane individuals on this planet. Too bad the majority of American voters aren't.

esalman• 1 year ago

He was doing similar stuff during his first term. It's just more blatant now.

ta12433• 1 year ago

Did you expect anything less?

Remember when presidents used to put their family farm into a blind trust to avoid any accusation of impropriety?

outer_web13• 1 year ago

This is what immunity buys you.

seydor2• 1 year ago

I wonder if the stock markets will learn to disregard the US president for the next 4 years

wtcactus• 1 year ago

His actions have real consequences for all the economy, stock markets can't simply disregard him.

immibis7• 1 year ago

Serious question: what's with the wave of utterly stupid comments on HN?

Is it yuppie college grads working in silicon valley startups who have always had a thick abstraction layer between them and the system that gives them their paycheck? Is it trolls? Is it lifelong diehard contrarians (the same thing as trolls really)? Is it something else?

seydor2• 1 year ago

you re asking a stupid comment for a serious answer, that's not very smart

steveBK1236• 1 year ago

He's turned the US stock market into the same model as China's - the entire up/down rests on the leaders words.

Which makes them fairly uninvestable.

ronsor2• 1 year ago

This isn't a good example because a lot investors are (or were) looking at China recently.

abirch• 1 year ago

You can look at China; however, if you invest in China you're assuming counterparty risk with Xi, as he can destroy any Chines company that he wants.

seanmcdirmid10• 1 year ago

The Chinese stock market...is not a fun place. It hasn't done very well in the last 5 years (unlike the US stock market) and is still way too subject to insider trading to be very accessible to most people. You can go with an emerging markets fund, but I would only do that as a hedge.

benjiro• 1 year ago

Very sure that he (or family members) are shorting stocks and then rebuying. This really feels like somebody deliberately creating market reactions, to benefit from them.

j_maffe• 1 year ago

Idk Xi is much more consistent with the CCP than Trump is with anything.

netsharc3• 1 year ago

It's amazing what Trump's accomplished for the US, isn't it.. he's dragged the country so fast downhill that China is looking more and more the better business partner.

cjbgkagh• 1 year ago

The markets were already like that but with federal reserve dot plots.

nonethewiser2• 1 year ago

There are structural differences between the US and Chinese stock markets that remain unchanged. The policy changed but the relationship between the President and the stock market did not change.

shortrounddev2• 1 year ago

Legally no, but normatively, yes. It was previously expected that the president wouldn't deliberately ruin the American economy for his own ego. That can no longer be expected.

clodushid• 1 year ago

US is the biggest consumer market, the most dynamic economy, and the wealthiest country in the world. No real world metric would ever implicate US as uninvestable. What this move is doing is making a few things very clear

1. US is decoupling full on from China. Any ally negotiating will have to show that they are not helping china to export, by putting up similar tariffs on China. Basically, declare your allegiance. And so far, no one has unexpectedly sided with China.

2. For the laggards who are waiting until the last seconds to move away from Chinese supply chain, trump is giving them more time but also telling them, hey it’s your last chance

3. Short squeeze for those who dare attack US economy

4. Navarros is the chief architect and his vision is aligned with trump to fully execute his plan. Just go read his book, he lays it all out

MaxHoppersGhost4• 1 year ago

Despite the media tantrum the market only dropped back to early 2024 levels at the most.

steveBK1236• 1 year ago

A president should not be essentially day trading the economy.

The volatility levels are unseen since Covid and GFC.

People’s livelihoods will be at stake soon enough.

dralley4• 1 year ago

Despite the media tantrum the market only dropped back to early 2025 levels at the most.

A) This is obviously wrong if you spend even 5 seconds looking it up, unless you misspelled "2024"

B) You can't just ignore that they spent several days telling financial journalists it was just a negotiating tactic and leading them to believe this might be peeled back quickly.

trhway• 1 year ago

He's turned the US stock market into the same model as China's - the entire up/down rests on the leaders words.

Not only stock market. The whole "Project 2025" point is to turn everything from the "rule-based" approach to "unitary-executive's-really-a-King's-whim" approach.

Just today - the export control or lack of it on specific Nvidia chips isn't really result of security needs of US, instead it is just a result of Jensen getting a dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Just like in Russia.

dingnuts• 1 year ago

I remember reading Unqualified Reservations ten years ago and thinking "this guy is a fucking nut!" and now his (Curtis Yarvin's) monarchist ideology seems to have walked right into the white house

Trump 2 isn't Trump 1. These are uncharted waters indeed

tehjoker• 1 year ago

The Chinese stock market is flat while their GDP rises because their economy is not based around the stock market. US economic management is entirely based around pumping the stock market.

byearthithatius• 1 year ago

He said FAKE NEWS literally just a day ago.... This man cannot be trusted about anything

java-man3• 1 year ago

Announce tariffs, the buddies buy. Announce pause, the buddies sell. Someone just made a truckload of money.

readthenotes12• 1 year ago

The stock market got almost down to reasonable values based on price to earning ratios.

Nevertheless, it was still a good time to buy, and also a good time just to ignore it and go about your daily business.

tucnak6• 1 year ago

When you say "buddies" what you really mean is "banks", "hedge funds" and "people to whom it was obvious that announced tariffs were bonkers". If you had the foresight and market sense, you could have made money, too. But you were scared, sold low, and now when it came back up, you suddenly found yourself at a loss (or the so-called "unrealised profit")

Don't blame the markets.

bmandale2• 1 year ago

Of course they were bonkers. You still had to know when the bottom was and when he was going to announce the reversal. Many people assumed he would keep it up for at least a week before pulling back. If he had the market would have pulled back even more. It's easy to time the market when you're from the future.

krona2• 1 year ago

Probably the bond market reaction caught the admin off-guard, possibly indicating a liquidity crisis. As usual, wont someone think of the overleveraged hedge fund managers?!

bmandale2• 1 year ago

if you think he wasn't going to do something like this from the start then I have a bridge to sell you

krona2• 1 year ago

Who's 'he'? Stephen Miran?

HaZeust• 1 year ago

The blatant market manipulation is what really kills me about this. Just 2 hours prior he posted on Truth Social that it's a "good time to buy". Nothing really matters anymore, and 90-day pause is already showing his cards that the same bear-bull market run is happening in July. It's just crazy to discredit the full faith and credit of the US Stock Market and dollar in such a brazen fashion.

Not to mention, with increasing China's tariffs - he STILL hasn't made compelling domestic policy to bring manufacturers here, and has put the cart before the horse by punishing U.S. companies for doing offshoring, before giving them a chance to build domestically. He's only made the super-cheap offshoring approach more expensive (but not more expensive than domestic production). Post-tariff offshoring is STILL a lower expenditure than (A) the investment of domestic infrastructure, (B) the runway of cash it takes before becoming sustainable, and (C) the ongoing wages, maintenance, and taxes to continually maintain it.

InkCanon• 1 year ago

I believe it's some bizarre ploy so his supporters will say, "You should listen to Trump!"

xyst• 1 year ago

[flagged]

lawn• 1 year ago

Unfortunately, there's a number of folks that think otherwise and they're more than a fringe.

krapp2• 1 year ago

Or is there a fringe number of folks that think otherwise?

If about 30 million people count as a fringe number, yes.

propagandist• 1 year ago

Illiteracy is common.

adamrezich4• 1 year ago

If social confirmation of your worldview is what you seek, you're certainly in the right place.

thuanao2• 1 year ago

Being an illiterate moron isn't fringe. It's quite commonplace. Educated and intelligent is fringe.

__MatrixMan__5• 1 year ago

I think he's well aware that the reasons he is giving for his actions make no sense. That doesn't mean he doesn't have a plan, he's just lying about it.

As for the actions themselves, they're pretty much his standard operating procedure:

I think I can get away with bullying these people, so I will

When he talks about the existing agreements being unfair, he means that we have leverage that we're not using. The proposed tariffs are proportional to the trade deficit because the trade deficit is a reasonable proxy for how invested that country is in its economic relations with the US. You can extort more from somebody who is heavily invested, and less from somebody who is lightly invested. It's a classic protection racket, just on a sliding scale.

He's trying to look ignorant because it's at least a better look than showing the malice that actually drives him.

yoyohello13• 1 year ago

I think he knows exactly what he is doing. Him and his friends are making boatloads of money doing it.

nemothekid• 1 year ago

Ever since the tariffs were first announced I've been trying to understand if there is any method to the madness.

There is sound reasoning behind the tariffs, and I can at least understand the motivations. However, to execute the vision behind the tariffs would be tantamount to severely contracting the American economy, and the voters would never agree to go hungry in order to militarily independent.

He knows what he's doing, but him and his ilk are openly lying to the American public because no one would ever agree to it.

dang• 1 year ago

Please don't break the site guidelines like this.

I'm not saying you owe the person in question better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

StormChaser_5• 1 year ago

It's not like the tariffs are gone. It's still 10% for everyone but China. That only seems small in comparison to what was being proposed before. I wonder will EU and others wait out 90 days while negotiating or match the 10% in kind

shaky-carrousel2• 1 year ago

Hopefully EU will still go ahead with the tariffs. We should not be dancing at the tune of the mad king.

jopsen• 1 year ago

Yes, but what's the rush here?

The EU should do what does best: make things boring.

If retaliatory tariffs is the way to go, maybe do it the boring way: considered bit by bit, no flashy announcement.

Or just make a 10 year deal on LNG so Trump can say we're paying the US money every year.

paulddraper5• 1 year ago

You think that's gonna be the best outcome?

EU already had 10% tariffs on all US autos. (Though tbf most other things were near zero.)

MaxHoppersGhost4• 1 year ago

EU has already had tariffs on US goods for a long time.

seanmcdirmid10• 1 year ago

Not as broadly to that extent though. Trump's tariffs are 10% of anything, so Europe will reciprocate in kind.

layer85• 1 year ago

Those amount to only around 3% on average.

knowaveragejoe2• 1 year ago

* The EU has had comparatively very small and targeted tariffs on US goods for a long time

Just so we're all on the same page, instead of maga talking points.

mk896• 1 year ago

If USA keeps 10% tariffs for everyone equally, why should we interfere? Serious question.

I believe that Trump is shaking things off, but his goal is to introduce a fixed "tariff" like a soft VAT.

He is just testing (and profiting with $$$$$) what happens when you do things like 30% there, 24% there, etc. But his long term goal is a fixed tax. In that context, who are we to judge them? We also have VAT on imports.

cwillu7• 1 year ago

You have VAT on more or less everything, imported or not. A “VAT” that _only_ applies to imports absolutely still deserves retaliatory measures.

tim3339• 1 year ago

There a lot to be said for ignoring other countries tariffs and just having free trade. Hong Kong and Singapore basically did that for decades and grew fast and became wealthy. Tariffs mostly hurt the countries introducing them.

There are some exceptions. Sudden changes can be painful if you built a factory to service some market and they block the sales all of a sudden. But a 10% across the board tariff may not make it worth retaliating.

rvnx3• 1 year ago

It's not a fixed tax where there is the same rate everywhere: when you check the tariff table, you can see that there is a different rate for each item (e.g. 9.4% for Cotton Jeans) and then it says in Chapter 99 that you pay "9.4% + xxx%" where xxx is the special rate for the country.

So it's xx% that goes on top of a rate defined by the type of the item.

michpoch3• 1 year ago

We also have VAT on imports.

And the US has sales tax.

VAT is paid on all products, it doesn't matter if it's domestic or imported!

wqaatwt6• 1 year ago

We also have VAT on imports.

Maybe you should not repeat these nonsensical talking points?

VAT applies to everything, both imports and domestically produced goods. This reasoning makes even less sense than Trump’s ChatGPT tables…

but his goal is to introduce a fixed "tariff" like a soft VAT.

You really don’t understand at all what VAT is?

Aurornis2• 1 year ago

It's still 10% for everyone but China.

There's actually some confusion about that. They said they paused the global tariffs but didn't mention the Canada and Mexico tariffs.

If the 10% global tariff is in addition to the Canada and Mexico tariffs, the net tariff rate on those countries could be quite high. Combined with 125% tariffs on China and we would have very burdensome tariffs on 3 of our largest trading partners.

The rally is because Trump caved to pressure and is backtracking earlier claims that he wasn't going to change his policy.

partiallypro3• 1 year ago

Mexico and Canada are still at 25% apparently.

wqaatwt6• 1 year ago

Didn’t the global “reciprocal” tariffs exempt Canada and Mexico?

freetanga4• 1 year ago

The stock exchange and the tariffs are not the battleground.

Asia started dropping US treasury bills. 30 year bills reached a max in decades

Trump blinked.

Edit: this was front and center in Financial Times, WSJ three hours ago. Now suddenly pushed back, exchange rally being front page news. People don’t understand how close to financial apocalypse we have been. Somebody in the WH scared the shit out of Trump.

cmrdporcupine3• 1 year ago

You will never convince any of his apologists that this is the case.

His first round with Canada back in February, and MAGA insisted "he won"

Then came back and tried the same thing again two months later. Same response from the Canadian side. Same slight backing off, reorganizing, but confusion, and nobody seems to actually know which tariffs apply and which do not.

It sounds now like 10% for the whole world, but still 25% steel and aluminum and other tariffs on Canada, the US's biggest trading partner and customer? How insane is that?

They're "flooding the zone" with confusion and chaos, and making money in the process. Anybody who wants to maintain power and influence and money has to get close to him, avoid criticizing him, and then they get the inside scoop.

It's mafia level crap.

somanyphotons• 1 year ago

Do you have a link or article title for reading about the dropping of tbills

disgruntledphd23• 1 year ago

It was in the FT but they reported it as rumour.

embeng4096• 1 year ago

From CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/09/us-treasury-yields-investors...

"Perhaps even more alarmingly, U.S. Treasury markets are also experiencing an incredibly aggressive selloff..."
The largest holders of Treasurys are Japan, China and the U.K.,...

freetanga4• 1 year ago

The scary part is that it has been scrubbed in many sites

https://www.ft.com/content/0005e091-930d-46ff-9e81-8591704a9...

freetanga4• 1 year ago

And after a few hours this seems to be confirmed

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-tariffs-cnn-tow...

I have a moderate understanding of finances, but for me this was the Siamese cats from the aristocats playing around the nuclear football

disgruntledphd23• 1 year ago

Trump didn't back down until after the 30 year auction went well, which doesn't support your hypothesis.

xnx2• 1 year ago

So Trump destroyed the hard-earned 80-year history of the United States for strength and stability for what exactly?

thuanao2• 1 year ago

Because he can, and because "owning the libs" is the whole modus operandi of the Republican Party that put him there. Seems obvious to me that the reason Trump uses tariffs is simply because that's the only tool available to him to exert his power.

Tariffs let him wave his dick around. Cutting taxes requires passing legislation. Raising other taxes requires passing legislation.

java-man3• 1 year ago

... and because 75,000,000 voters approved it. I fear what's coming next.

HarHarVeryFunny3• 1 year ago

Could be (a bit) worse. Lyndon Johnson named his dick "jumbo", and on occasion would take it out in front of journalists etc.

__MatrixMan__5• 1 year ago

I assume it was part of the deal he made to get elected: Take the US out of the game internationally, and you can be in charge of whatever's left over. Nothing else adequately describes his actions.

McDyver• 1 year ago

Apparently, for insider trading

alabastervlog6• 1 year ago

Imagine being able to trade, knowing what he was about to say.

On margin.

Both the ups, and the downs (short trades).

Imagine being able to make it an open secret that if someone pays you and publicly kisses your ass a little, you'll send some of those advance hints their way.

Imagine how much money you could make in a matter of weeks.

HarHarVeryFunny3• 1 year ago

Apparently he's been bragging today that world leaders are "kissing his ass", which seems to be just as likely to be his motivation as anything else.

He's also planning a $100M military parade in DC, apparently on his birthday (although he denies that point).

He's a wannabe dictator - seems same motivation for Greenland, Panana, Canada (51st state), maybe also strikes on Houthi.

daxfohl2• 1 year ago

At least we got the Gulf of America. The only question now is, now that we've alienated our allies, shown our unwillingness to cooperate on anything, demonstrated our inability to back up our show of strength, openly laid out our lack of solidarity, and established our irrationality and volatility to the world, how long will it take China to decide to waltz a few battleships into Hawaii and claim the Pacific as the Gulf of China.

paganel2• 1 year ago

He's also planning a $100M military parade in DC, apparently on his birthday (although he denies that point).

This would be straight Roman Emperor stuff.

arandomusername19• 1 year ago

Strikes on houthi are not because "he's a wannabe dictator", let's be real. US is involved in ME for one reason and one reason only.

tim3339• 1 year ago

I seem to remember the previous Trump term being a bit nuts too.

seanmcdirmid10• 1 year ago

Are we really going to not consider Trump really being a Russian Asset and this is just WAI (destroy America's credibility) as far as he is concerned? What else even makes sense at this point?

arandomusername19• 1 year ago

Trump being a Russian asset is so tiring and wildly invalid.

He's threatening Iran because he's a Russian asset right? Bombing Houthis too? No, someone else benefits from those, maybe he's an asset of that country?

fancyfredbot3• 1 year ago

Too late for everyone who spent massively on flying in stock ahead of the tariff deadline. Too late for those forced to sell financial assets in order to pay margin calls. Too late for those working on projects involving foreign manufacturers which have now been cancelled due to tariff uncertainty. Too late for those who lost sales while they figured out pricing. Too early for the people fundraising to build US manufacturing capabilities. What a mess.

skyyler3• 1 year ago

It's almost like the whole point is just to enable insider trading on a scale we've never seen before.

jstummbillig• 1 year ago

Is there any reliable instrument to find out? This seems so obvious, given the only alternative option seems to be believing they are completely insane.

JackYoustra2• 1 year ago

Doesn't make much sense, if you're insider trading you profit more if you move one stock a lotlotlot vs all the stocks merely a lot.

nialv7• 1 year ago

Remember that "debunked" rumor tweet on Monday that created a market rollercoaster ride? The one that predicted exactly this?

What the hell is even going on

dralley4• 1 year ago

https://x.com/Ike_Saul/status/1910028885460148427

cmurf• 1 year ago

https://bsky.app/profile/unusualwhales.bsky.social/post/3lmf...

"Alright, I think people knew of the tariff pause and traded it beforehand ... "

pixelesque• 1 year ago

https://bsky.app/profile/unusualwhales.bsky.social/post/3lmf...

Seems to show people knew it was going to happen a few minutes before he posted.

92834092322• 1 year ago

Biggest pump and dump ever.

xenospn• 1 year ago

It’s now called just “trading”.

bamboozled• 1 year ago

I believe that’s what is going on as well.

sleepyguy• 1 year ago

Markets are celebrating. How long before they realize that the China tariffs will destroy the profits of companies like Walmart, Apple, Dollar Store, Harbor Freight, etc, and a 10% tax hike on consumers across the board on all other imports? We are still headed for a recession, and the destruction from the greatest deal maker who ever lived will be lasting.

Let's not forget everything else he's doing because there is nothing good in the plan.

louthy8• 1 year ago

It’s clear the China tariffs (in their current form) won’t last the week.

MammaMia20254• 1 year ago

unless President Xi calls him tomorrow invites to Beijing and turns out to be "great guy". Followed by tariffs for China lowered to 20%.

arandomusername19• 1 year ago

Oh no, not my Apple!

The hike will not be 10% on consumers. In most cases the seller will eat a good chunk of the cost otherwise it won't sell.

amirhirsch• 1 year ago

No one will make long-term investments in US manufacturing capabilities in response to policy that will revert in 4 years.

arrrg2• 1 year ago

It’s worse than that. Everything leading up to this and this reversion right now is a perfect demonstration that the current US administration cannot be trusted and behaves in irrational ways. You cannot expect consistency and enduring policies. It’s all fickle and capricious. How are you supposed to do any planning with this?

This is all so obviously dumb and I’m frankly astounded by so many people (especially here on HN) playing devils advocate or, I don’t know, honestly believing that this all makes sense.

Even if you agree with the stated (also somewhat incoherent, by the way) goals why do you think this implementation can achieve any of that?

brundolf2• 1 year ago

Or 4 days

rchaud2• 1 year ago

The White House can pressure red states to offer companies sweetheart deals so the President can take credit. If they refuse, he pulls his support for them come election time.

BuckRogers• 1 year ago

Yes they will, because when industry can't bet on being tariff free outside the US, they'll hedge their bets and have at least some manufacturing here. The damage is already done in that regard. The instability is the warning across the bow for companies that import.

grandempire9• 1 year ago

Oh no. Stock isn’t risk free automatic gains?

I know that with RSUs etc people treat it that way. But no the risk is real.

mikeocool• 1 year ago

The US President intentionally crashing the market wasn't part of the risk profile until recently.

doctorwho42• 1 year ago

And everything is still inflating in cost.

listenallyall• 1 year ago

Too late for those forced to sell financial assets in order to pay margin calls

Yea, I want my president looking out for financial vultures leveraged to the hilt

brundolf2• 1 year ago

And who knows where his whims will go tomorrow

mschuster91• 1 year ago

Too late for those forced to sell financial assets in order to pay margin calls.

That's the true aim behind all of this constant course shifting. The ultra rich, those who have large amounts of liquid assets or outright cash, can make bank at the moment... buy the dip. Even if the markets dip another 20%, they'll rebound soon enough.

dtquad• 1 year ago

Too early for the people fundraising to build US manufacturing capabilities.

It's a good idea to hedge against future trade uncertainties.

After COVID some Danish and German companies began looking for non-Chinese alternatives for electronics manufacturing. The only area where China is the absolute better alternative is PCB manufacturing without mounting chips/components. The Danish and German companies get tens of thousands of these bare PCBs from China. The chips/components are from Taiwan, South Korea, the US, Italy, and Germany and can be cost effectively mounted in Denmark and Germany.

KennyBlanken• 1 year ago

Not really sure why you left out the tens of thousands of people who were almost immediately laid off when companies and their suppliers idled factories?

In the automotive sector alone - GM, Ford, and Stellantis all flipped the master breaker to "off" on a number of plants and sent everyone packing.

That hire-back will not be instant. People are going to miss payments for rent/mortgage, car loans, utility bills, etc.

Let's not forget that many companies hit the brakes, hard, on exporting goods to the US - so there's going to be the shipping equivalent of those traffic "waves" because two hours ago someone on the highway panic-braked

fancyfredbot3• 1 year ago

In my defence I mentioned it was "Too late for those working on projects involving foreign manufacturers which have now been cancelled due to tariff uncertainty" which I think covers these auto workers?

Still I'm sure I unintentionally missed many examples of people who've been negatively affected by this saga. I didn't mean anything by that, it's just ignorance or lack of thought on my part.

xg152• 1 year ago

Surprise cutscenes can be interesting in games, not so much in reality.

tlogan2• 1 year ago

So we celebrate 10% tariffs. Lol

insane_dreamer5• 1 year ago

So, it was all a bluff? (As many people suspected it would be.)

spacephysics2• 1 year ago

It brought a large number of countries to the negotiating table, and shows he’s willing to execute on threats of keeping tariffs high for an individual country.

Now is the ripe time, 90 days, to make a deal with the US and offer the best terms.

The whole point of Trump is to leverage uncertainty, make an unrealistically high water mark, then go down from there (to a point thats still very favorable)

This rationale can explain many actions he’s taken. Is it reckless? Risky? For sure. Does it work? It has in the past, let’s hope it does for the global financial system, for everyone’s sake.

louthy8• 1 year ago

It brought a large number of countries to the negotiating table

Did it? They said it did, but I wouldn’t trust a word they say.

What concessions has he actually got from the rest of the world? Was it worth it? It seems to me the two biggest trading ‘partners’ (China and EU) were escalating, not conceding.

affinepplan• 1 year ago

stop normalizing this idiocy. there was no country that wasn't already willing to negotiate trade relations with the US.

linguae2• 1 year ago

This reckless way of negotiating has a cost: our trustworthiness. The more recklessness Trump does, the more other nations will strongly consider naming some other currency the global reserve currency, such as the euro, the yuan, or something else, maybe even something new.

This isn't 1946 when the United States was heads-and-shoulders the most prosperous nation on earth, with most other developed countries having to rebuild. Other regions such as the European Union, China, and the bloc of East Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) also have strong, competitive economies with a high standard of living for many of their residents. If they got together, it's possible that they could move to some alternative to the US dollar should they wish, and with Trump's bullying, this might just be the push.

insane_dreamer5• 1 year ago

Now is the ripe time, 90 days, to make a deal with the US and offer the best terms.

What terms? Remember, the tariffs were not reciprocal -- that was a boldfaced lie. They were based on trade imbalance. So what, Cambodia is supposed to pledge to buy ... what exactly? ... from the US in order to balance its trade?

The reason Cambodia or Vietnam have a trade imbalance is because US/other companies have factories there to produce the goods. You think those companies are going to set up garment and shoe factories in the US? With what labor?

The whole thing reeks of a shockingly inept understanding of global trade and economics.

bdangubic6• 1 year ago

This rationale can explain many actions he’s taken. Is it reckless? Risky? For sure. Does it work? It has in the past, let’s hope it does for the global financial system, for everyone’s sake.

Global financial reacted to the idiocy adequately enough to tell you what it thinks of it… You are trying to rationalize something that is as far from rational as it gets…

behole• 1 year ago

GOLD in Mental Gymnastics

yxhuvud• 1 year ago

10% is still a lot. Counter tariffs will still happen.

MaxHoppersGhost4• 1 year ago

EU and many other counties have already had tariffs on the US for a long time.

knowaveragejoe2• 1 year ago

* EU and many other counties have had comparatively small and targeted tariffs on the US for a long time

acdha4• 1 year ago

You’ve been repeating that a lot but as many people have corrected you, they’re nothing like this broad or high: only 1%, and that’s balanced by the EU’s trade deficit on services since we don’t make things like good cars for Europe but they buy a lot of software, entertainment, etc.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...

regularjack• 1 year ago

On specific products

jollyllama• 1 year ago

Would triggering counter tariffs be deflationary as net result will be less money coming into the US?

digianarchist4• 1 year ago

10% only applies to countries that have not retaliated. I assume (dangerous in these times) that any retaliation will cause reinstatement of the previous rates.

askvictor• 1 year ago

The UK and Australia, which had 10% from the start, and didn't retaliate, get... 10%. Brilliant.

codedokode5• 1 year ago

Well if the countries don't take any action, doesn't it mean that they believe current situation is better than any other choice (and anyway, the tariffs will be paid by American buyers) and therefore the previous tariffs were too low?

me2too3• 1 year ago

This man's absurdity never ceases to amaze me. How can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos?

Moreover, from the outside (European here), it looks like the US president can literally do whatever he wants without being subject to regulations or facing any consequences - pretty much like a dictatorship. No discussion, no parliament, no opposition taken into account. Crazy.

amanaplanacanal4• 1 year ago

Evidently Congress gave the presidency emergency powers to do what he wants with tariffs, all he has to do is declare an emergency. Just one more example of how Congress is completely broken.

me2too3• 1 year ago

He literally created the emergency himself. What the hell. I can't understand how one of the most powerful countries in the world doesn't have a system in place to prevent the president to act like a dictator

vel0city• 1 year ago

That power is only supposed to last for some number of days before review by Congress. But Congress decided a day isn't a day anymore, at least for the rest of the year.

moogly2• 1 year ago

Did he even declare an emergency for the latest near world-wide tariffs? Are they even pretending anymore? If so I missed it.

ativzzz• 1 year ago

The US currently has 49 ongoing national emergencies, that are renewed every year by the president

The last 8 or so were created by Trump. Like you said, he's just doing what is already allowed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...

krapp2• 1 year ago

Only Republican Presidents get that kind of carte blanche.

They would already be impeaching if it was a Democrat.

myko• 1 year ago

True, because if Democrats had an anti-American POTUS hell-bent on destroying the country they would be helping the impeachment process, not defending them

blasphemers2• 1 year ago

The democrats just allowed a dementia patient to run the country for four years

pavlov• 1 year ago

It now feels quaint that, not long ago, people used to speculate what Gödel's loophole was:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_Loophole

We're witnessing that there doesn't need to be any single clever actively exploited loophole. A two-party presidential system can become a dictatorship if one party holds just enough power across all branches of government to not resist what their leader wants.

me2too3• 1 year ago

Hey, thanks for the link - I added it to my reading list. From the introduction, it seems to fit the current situation (and that's not good).

marcosdumay6• 1 year ago

Turns out you only need majority in 4 different contests that are all constantly fluctuating around 50%.

Even if they weren't strongly correlated, you would still be able to do a coup every 200 years or so.

kylehotchkiss2• 1 year ago

How can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos

A lot of people in USA felt they were entitled to their slice of the American dream, did not achieve it because we stopped building houses therefore you can't buy one on a high school education like our parents and grandparents did. Add in what appears to be somewhat of a collapse in people starting relationships/families and you suddenly have a massive segment of the population with little to lose.

I presume many on the HN community are insulated from this reality of life in USA.

orangecat2• 1 year ago

There's some truth to that, but then the solution is to build more housing, not impose tariffs which only make houses and everything else less affordable.

moogly2• 1 year ago

That explains one part of his base, but not the part that lives in McMansion suburbs.

Vegenoid2• 1 year ago

Why the poor look at the people sitting on giant piles of money, and believe them when they say that China took the money, is another story.

DFHippie• 1 year ago

This is also how it looks from the inside. It's baffling. Apparently all our vaunted checks and balances are useless if one vindictive and incompetent political party controls all three branches of the government.

orangecat2• 1 year ago

How can his supporters appreciate all this - constant - chaos?

"Burn it all down" is popular on both the far right and far left.

it looks like the US president can literally do whatever he wants without being subject to regulations or facing any consequences

Yes, presidents have been given far too much power to do whatever they want by declaring a fake "emergency". It's inexcusable that Congress hasn't put a stop to this.

8note5• 1 year ago

its reality TV. his supporters are generally insulated from the consequences, but even when affected, get the excitement of participating.

arandomusername19• 1 year ago

No discussion, no parliament, no opposition taken into account. Crazy.

Is it that much different from EU? Where was the discussion before mass immigration? Where was the opposition taken into account there?

mixologist3• 1 year ago

Mass immigration in EU is a result of US wars in middle east. It was not some kind of a plan by EU. It was just a reaction to shit that is happening. They were put in this position because they had too much faith in US.

gmd63• 1 year ago

So if you cozy up to the mad king, he'll tell you what he plans to do with appropriate notice. This is the least American tyrannical bullshit I've ever seen in this country, and nobody should be condoning it.

The most important thing that can be done for the prosperity of America right now is to put an end to the senseless fraud and nonsensical policy promoted by the snake oil salesman of the MAGA movement.

louthy8• 1 year ago

Trump has now shown his hand. Even with the tariffs on China remaining, it’s clear that Trump will back down on any extreme positions he takes. So, expect the china tariffs to be backed off soon too (once he gets some concession that he can brandish as a win).

In 3 months, sell your positions, let him play his stupid games and re-buy once he backs down, because he will. Or just hold and ride it out.

10% sounds like where we’ll default to in the long-term because that was the ‘base rate’ for everybody anyway. He just wants to rattle his sabre, especially with China.

It’s quite pathetic, really, but weirdly I feel slightly more calm about the situation now that I realise he hasn’t got the bottle to follow through.

trash_cat• 1 year ago

it’s clear that Trump will back down on any extreme positions he takes.

That has always been the case with him. That's literally his negotiation tactic.

adamrezich4• 1 year ago

If only someone had written a book on this exact topic, back in the 80s.

louthy8• 1 year ago

I think that’s a fair comment. The only reason why I was not entirely convinced that that would be the case is that tariffs seem to be one of the positions that Trump was truly ideologically bound to.

I couldn’t tell whether he would really go through with this or not. Now it’s clear he has no bottle at all. So weirdly is more of a comfort.

jeffbee3• 1 year ago

SPX E-mini futures calls near the money doubled in the space of 1h. Everyone Trump tipped off potentially doubled their money with zero risk

tmaly• 1 year ago

If Trump is hoping to push the 10 year treasury rate down so he can roll the 9 trillion coming due in June, he is in for a wakeup. China is selling their holdings and driving the rates up. He is going to actually have to have a grownup negotiation with them rather than going scorched earth.

refulgentis• 1 year ago

Art of the deal. Thank you President Trump!

i80and• 1 year ago

Gotta be careful -- Poe's Law is in full force rn in American Politics. People might read this seriously

jurgenaut23• 1 year ago

What a shit show...

Huntsecker• 1 year ago

The reality is that countries like spain have come out and said they need to move closer to China as USA is not a stable trading partner, within 24hrs of this Trump has back tracked, I'm sure MAGA will say this is all part of the mega master plan but at least to me its more the realisation this was turning into a car crash and he still has a window to somehow in trumps mind blame it all on the chinese

ck2• 1 year ago

Congress could end this in 24 hours with a one paragraph/page bill

and regardless who is in power next decade the dems should anyway

It's like some blackhat is trying to find every loophole in government and exploiting it, like a fuzzer test

bluGill9• 1 year ago

The democrats has the president for 4 years, and plenty of power in congress. If they cared they would have done something.

jillesvangurp• 1 year ago

Mid term elections are November next year. Some time between now and then, republican house and senator members will start getting more than a little bit anxious about not losing their seats. The current chaos is not great for their chances. The closer that election gets, the more likely it is that something like what you suggest might happen.

The problem of course is that any move like that is going to result in chaos inside the republican party. I imagine that might delay the moment before e.g. Mike Johnson (speaker of the house) puts such a thing up for vote in the house. Because it sounds like that would be a career ending move for him. Until that changes, Trump can do as he pleases essentially unopposed.

outer_web13• 1 year ago

Lot of whiplash with these tariff policies. I'm wondering if maybe it'd be a better idea to give* Congress this power instead.

SoyAnto• 1 year ago

Congress does have the power (article I, section 8), however it delegated this power to the president for "extraordinary" situations with certain laws.

sitkack• 1 year ago

The nondelegation doctrine is rooted in certain separation of powers principles.1 In limiting Congress’s power to delegate, the *nondelegation doctrine exists primarily to prevent Congress from ceding its legislative power to other entities* not vested with legislative authority under the Constitution. As interpreted by the Court, the doctrine seeks to ensure that legislative decisions are made through a bicameral legislative process by the elected Members of Congress or governmental officials subject to constitutional accountability.2 Reserving the legislative power for a bicameral Congress was "intended to erect enduring checks on each Branch and to protect the people from the improvident exercise of power by mandating certain prescribed steps."

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S1-5-1/A...

Any democrats with working brain stems and genitals should be taking this to supreme court.

peeters• 1 year ago

"Extraordinary", such as a fictional fentanyl emergency at the northern border (despite the fact that a trivial amount of fentanyl enters the U.S. from Canada, and more enters Canada from the U.S.).

Of course, you have Congress to keep the President in check that these are real emergencies. Which is why the House will definitely be bringing S.J.Res. 37 to the floor, right? Because it's their sworn duty to act as a check on executive power, right?

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/119-2025/s160

EasyMark3• 1 year ago

They need to take it back, regardless. It's proven that Americans can't be expected to elect adults to the Presidency any longer, they no longer use logic or emergency situations, they use it for egotistical narcissistic feelings of being important by playing red light, green light on a trade war between the two most dangerous countries in the world

bluGill9• 1 year ago

I wrote my congressperson (house and both senators) to take back the power. If enough others do the same they will, but if it is just talk on forums they assume nobody cares.

mring33621• 1 year ago

I wrote my Senator, Dick Durbin, prior to the November 2024 election, begging him to do something to shore up the legislature, prior to Trump's possible return to office.

He responded that he's not allowed to discuss campaigning and that I can instead donate to his 'friends' network (PAC?)

I don't think the Dem establishment really opposes Trump at all...

nineplay2• 1 year ago

My takeaway from what I've read and heard in the last few weeks is that his only actual motivation is to 'win'. He bragged yesterday that other countries are kissing his ass to negotiate deals on the tariffs. I think that was all he wanted, I think he now thinks that this whole tariff thing was a success and he's going to move on to the next crazy idea.

The rest of us suffer for it, except for the sad portion of the republican party who's only motivation is to own the libs and who now are congratulating themselves on how thoroughly the libs have been owned.

everybodyknows• 1 year ago

other countries are kissing his ass

Notable exception: Xi Jinping. So it's a contest of wills. Trump vs. the man who enforced a "zero-Covid" lockdown on 1.4 billion people.

nineplay2• 1 year ago

I like to believe that no other countries are kissing his ass and all the calls were from the few true patriots that are hiding out in his administration.

"Hello President Trump, I am the leader of Bigorgia. I know you are a big strong manly man and I will beg you to stop the tariffs please."

But I agree, Xi Jinping is a real strongman, not a sad old man with delusions of grandeur.

hydrogen7800• 1 year ago

From an article written in 1979:

He once told me: “I won’t make a deal just to make a profit. It has to have flair.” Another Manhattan developer said it differently: “Trump won’t do a deal unless there’s something extra — a kind of moral larceny — in it. He’s not satisfied with a profit. He has to take something more. Otherwise, there’s no thrill.” [0]

[0]https://www.villagevoice.com/how-a-young-donald-trump-forced...

croes6• 1 year ago

He also bragged that the tariffs bring 2 billions a day and the crowd cheered.

They do realize who pays that 2 billions?

Hojojo• 1 year ago

Or that none of them will ever see any of that money and none of it will ever go towards helping them in any way?

chrisco2553• 1 year ago

The answer to that is far more complex than you realize. Tariffs generally force export-driven countries to devalue their currencies.

muzani5• 1 year ago

It's literally in his book. He does a crazy thing. Big. Massive. Then gets the other party to negotiate it down to what he really intended. 10% is a lot, but now it looks smaller. He's also fighting back very hard on a few fronts, as per the book.

consp3• 1 year ago

And it is entirely predictable which is why most countries did not kneejerk into action.

trgn• 1 year ago

aestheticism is a feature of fascism. the late night phone call, the strong words in the oval office, boarding air force one with retinue in tow, hurry hurry... it's less about what is being achieved, and more about the pageantry that something is being achieved. change, action, disruption, violence (metaphorical or not) are good in and of itself, pomp is the reification of these impulses. i disliked succession precisely for this reason, the idolization of these processes (whether it was under the guise of irony is irrelevant).

these fetishes can start to supplant material reality, real banana republic stuff. we should give the wasps and neoliberals credit to always have been somewhat immune to and disdainful of these practices.

plaidfuji• 1 year ago

Correct take. Any attempt to find a rational objective behind the tariffs is foolish.

4ndrewl3• 1 year ago

Pulling stunts like this just makes the USA even less investable.

Markets operating at the whims of a capricious King (is there even a functioning government right now?)

the_arun• 1 year ago

Without taking sides, what if we think this wasn't a stunt but a genuine experiment?

AlecSchueler2• 1 year ago

What's the difference?

__MatrixMan__5• 1 year ago

What do you propose was learned from it that wasn't already known?

4ndrewl3• 1 year ago

Or performance art

JKCalhoun4• 1 year ago

Yeah, pretty sure the markets will "re-adjust" from their good-news swoon when they realize nothing has really changed.

grandempire9• 1 year ago

Do you recommend any alternative markets to be more investable?

4ndrewl3• 1 year ago

Somewhere with a predictable economic policy that doesn't flip flop from week-to-week.

solardev• 1 year ago

Wait, I thought true random numbers were hard to generate?

udev40962• 1 year ago

Nothing is truly random. It's all just an illusion!

pikminguy• 1 year ago

I'm pretty sure radioactive decay is truly random in the deepest possible sense.

misantroop4• 1 year ago

Insider trading, pure and simple. You can bet his son-in-law and all his buddies made hundreds of millions here. America is a 3rd world country, nothing else.

thih92• 1 year ago

Announce a controversial decision. See if it sticks. If not, claim it was a joke and you never meant that.

Drama, manipulation, and a US government tactic, all in one.

dcow4• 1 year ago

Except they implemented the decision and are responding to countries’ willingness to negotiate fair trade terms, just like with Mexico. Nobody is saying “just joking”. If people weren’t 1000% dismissive of the leader’s stated intentions they might be able to follow along. It’s been crystal clear to me that the goal has always been to renegotiate trade terms not to live in a world with persistent reciprocal tariffs.

JeremyNT2• 1 year ago

This is a hilarious assertion. Their stated objectives have been all over the map, so any outcome can fit at least some of their statements.

Admin proxies have said tariffs are to pay for tax cuts, they've stated they're intended to bring back manufacturing jobs, they've stated we should prepare for a lengthy trade war and accept the higher prices like men, and while some proxies have said this is a negotiation tactic others have stated unequivocally that this is not a negotiation tactic.

Bold assertions like yours are easy to make with the benefit of hindsight. What do you predict tariff rates to be in a week? A month? A year?

davidguetta6• 1 year ago

Not sure why this is downvoted, this is absolutely the kind of power play Trump did his entire business career on.

throw4847285• 1 year ago

I don't believe it's being done so strategically. He's not Franklin D Roosevelt.

I forget all the details, but some constituency once came to FDR to ask him to do something. He likely leaked that he was planning on doing so to major Catholic organizations in America, and when there was outrage, turned to the first party and told them that he'd love to, but his hands were tied. He never intended to do anything in the first place, he just wanted a convenient scapegoat.

This doesn't make any sense. Why not just go with 10% tariffs across the board? There wasn't going to be any pushback, it should be clear at this point. Or why not just leak the plan, and then say "I guess it has to be 10% because business leaders won't accept higher."

This isn't masterful juggling, it's improv comedy.

magicalhippo• 1 year ago

Like chess[1], Trump had his finger on his head. Not official move until he removes his finger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cv9n0QbLUM

robin_reala• 1 year ago

The best way to stay clear from this insanity is to divest from the US as much as possible / reasonable. It won’t help second-order effects, but it reduces your exposure.

dachris• 1 year ago

I wouldn't go that far (there's still the possibility that things change for the better for whatever reason), but those 60%-70% of the US in global stock indices really do look like single country risk now.

tim3339• 1 year ago

Seldom a dull moment with the present government. He's still saying 125% on China so it's not back to normality. Also I guess the penguins still face 10%.

rchaud2• 1 year ago

Few dull moments in Mobutu's time in Zaire too I hear.

mandeepj• 1 year ago

With today's rollback, the glitz and glam event - Liberation Day - held last week, was not really a Liberation Day? :-)

BLKNSLVR3• 1 year ago

Does that make today Incarceration Day or Subjugation Day?

codedokode5• 1 year ago

Well it was a Day, not Liberation Month or Year.

jdlyga• 1 year ago

Trump is like your father who overreacts to everything but changes his mind when he calms down. "You're grounded for a year!". 1 hour later. "Ok, you're not grounded. But you can't go out with your friend this weekend".

volkk• 1 year ago

poor analogy since this implies that Trump has everyone's best interests in his heart

daxfohl2• 1 year ago

I'd liken him more to some rich kid trying to show off some made-up street cred by going over the top on everything. Eventually walking everything back while shouting dumb threats once he realizes he's in over his head. Then somehow he forgets it all and does the same dumb thing the next day. Every single time.

usaar333• 1 year ago

VIX is still at 35%. We are still in quite unstable territory, just not insanely unstable.

DavidPiper• 1 year ago

I didn't know about VIX ("volatility index" I presume from a quick Google), thanks for posting this.

Interesting(?) that the only two previous spikes higher than the current one are COVID and the 2008 GFC.

compumike• 1 year ago

Is it just the historical legacy of international trade that tariffs apply only to physical goods, but not to something like software-as-a-service subscriptions, digital media, or intellectual property?

As the latter categories are more representative of US exports, it would surely be an interesting escalation if other countries were to start including them in their “retaliatory” tariffs.

benob• 1 year ago

This is exactly what EU is discussing

Nemo_bis4• 1 year ago

Indeed. There are many options on the table.

https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-brussels-amazon-goog...

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-trade-bazooka-anti-coerci...

https://www.euractiv.com/section/tech/news/france-singles-ou...

davidguetta6• 1 year ago

I still wonder why this was not done instantly by EU.

US has an imbalance on goods that was used to calculate the tariff amount, but it has the opposite imbalance on service from what I've read

kansface• 1 year ago

The EU effectively backdoors tariffs against US software vendors via fines and the occasional if ineffective subsidy for local competitors in the local language.

foepys• 1 year ago

Easy: because next to 100% of EU government computers run Windows and MS Office.

nisa2• 1 year ago

It would be a just a hefty fee for most EU companies and not much more. From what I've seen Azure is pretty popular in most bigger companies and smaller shops and websites use often AWS or Google cloud. Microsoft Windows and Office is also everywhere - it would be a tax on European business with little effects on the USA because moving away from big clouds won't happen because there is no realistic alternative.

Last I've looked "Lidl Cloud" from Schwartz-IT that is often mentioned as alternative is basically managed Kubernetes for more than double the price of Azure/AWS before rebates. They have that idiotic meaningless TÜV button on their websites and unfortunately it's not technical excellence but rather a trap for boomer CEOs...

Europe missed that boat unfortunately and I don't see that changing soon. Hetzner/OVH and so on only provide bare metal or virtual machines for little money but there is no European cloud with serious IaC and managed services that are stable and battle tested as far as I know.

Changing taxation rules is the interesting topic but unfortunately EU countries are competing on that and that would destroy the business model of countries like Luxembourg or Ireland - I'm all for changing it and it would be better in the long-term but it's probably impossible to pull off at the moment.

amelius3• 1 year ago

What I don't understand is why other countries didn't make the threat to make any tariffs hold for a year or longer. That would scare Trump away from doing these stupid experiments.

nearbuy• 1 year ago

How would it work?

Say an American multinational like Microsoft provides some SaaS. They have a division in Europe where their developers help make their products. They have offices, customer support, servers, etc. in Europe. Do they pay a partial tariff based on what fraction of the development of their software happened in the US? What if they sell the rights to the European version of their software to their European division?

throwawaymaths• 1 year ago

Yes, that makes sense for Europe but it doesn't help China, because China already prevents a considerable amount of US media consumption and much of what is consumed is bootlegged anyways.

kowabungalow3• 1 year ago

I'm also not sure why other countries aren't moving to criminalize trading crypto to try to tank him and his cronies since the US has given up on preventing presidential conflict of interest.

snickerbockers7• 1 year ago

uhhhhh if you want bitcoin and etherium to moon the best thing you could do for the crypto-community would be to present it as a tangible threat to your country's political and financial elite due to existing outside the confines of their regulatory powers.

tow21• 1 year ago

Much harder to enforce against services.

Physical goods you can hold until tariffs are paid.

Services are paid for by invoices between two corporate entities whose legal domicile may have nothing to do with the real country of origin of the services.

Lots of European SaaS providers invoice US customers from their US subsidiary - impossible to distinguish the transaction in order to put a tariff on it.

taeric5• 1 year ago

I'm curious what sort of "as a service" things you would have applied this to in the past? Seems like a simple answer of "yes" as to whether how we collected taxes in the past were largely a legacy of how trade happened?

ianferrel3• 1 year ago

I think partly the historical legacy, but also the ease of enforcement and the fact that lower tariffs and services have trended together.

Collecting taxes on goods flowing through a limited number of physical locations is much much easier than trying to audit the client list of a huge number of foreign service providers.

Agreed that other countries are considering this.

Nemo_bis4• 1 year ago

You don't need to hit a huge number of service providers because the USA market is highly concentrated.

That's why you read things like «The Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI), a nuclear option that has yet to be deployed, would empower the EU executive to hit U.S. service industries such as tech and banking». https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-trade-bazooka-anti-coerci...

You can just pick the top 10 biggest financial and tech firms and be done with it.

snickerbockers7• 1 year ago

software-as-a-service subscriptions

when people in other countries use that at a non-trivial scale, aren't the servers on the other end of the connection still located in their region?

mort962• 1 year ago

Sure, but when we pay our AWS bills, that money still goes to Amazon which is US-based, even though we servers we rent are in Frankfurt.

delusional4• 1 year ago

The EU is discussing it, but are currently debating if that would be seen as an escalation of the conflict.

Yes it would be a strong response, but unlike the US we are not interested in appearing like the strongest idiots, the EU would rather we all get along and trade. We'd rather work on real issues instead of this self damaging garbage.

marcosdumay6• 1 year ago

The Brazilian Congress finished approving a law yesterday granting the president powers to retaliate by voiding intellectual property.

krsdcbl• 1 year ago

Enforcement will be the issue here.

If I order physical goods from a foreign nation it's gonna have to somehow get into my hands, and can be withheld until i pay tariffs

If a irish subsidiary invoices me subscription prices for intangible services, there's no way in the current legal world to enforce a tax on my end

Animats2• 1 year ago

Possibly because lawsuits challenging the power of the President to impose tariffs under the Emergency Economic Powers Act are underway.[1] GOP support for Congress taking back control of tariffs is building.[2] At some point, Congress or the courts will take his toys away.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/trump-tariffs-hit-lawsuit-group-his...

[2] https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5236142-congress-tariff-...

hello_computer2• 1 year ago

Seems kinda crazy that so much power was ever vested in the president.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48435

eftychis• 1 year ago

Laziness and fear of the closet monster beget tyrants.

Animats2• 1 year ago

How to handle emergency authority in a democracy has been a hard problem back to the Roman Empire. Read up on Roman dictators.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator

rurp3• 1 year ago

We've all been learning just how much of the US system runs on assumption of there being some baseline level of competence and good faith. It hasn't been a pretty lesson.

I'm honestly not sure there is another way since laws can't cover all possible future edge cases with effective enforcement mechanisms. The simpler fix is to not elect blatantly corrupt and incompetent leaders, but voters failed that task and now the country is paying the price.

stevage• 1 year ago

It's interesting to see it as an answer to the question, how long does it take to turn a well regulated democracy with a powerless head of state into an autocracy.

antognini2• 1 year ago

I've seen relatively little discussion about these lawsuits, but I do think there is a pretty good chance that SCOTUS will rule these tariffs unconstitutional. (It's certainly more likely than Congress rescinding the powers they've ceded to the presidency.)

Constitutionally, the power to set tariffs resides with the Legislative branch, not the Executive branch. Congress has delegated some authority to set tariffs under certain conditions (namely, emergencies and matters related to national security). But the Court is clear that one branch cannot delegate all of its powers to another. The Court is pretty deferential to the Executive branch, especially in matters of national security. But no matter how much you squint, it's hard to see how setting broad based tariffs on all goods from every foreign countries qualifies under the Emergency Economic Powers Act.

magicloop10• 1 year ago

It is a sound analysis but I think there are other non-legal factors at play.

If the president tries to do X, then the lawyers block X, then in political game theory the president "wins" in the eyes of the electorate because the president can argue "my plan was perfect, the execution failed due to the opposition, so I am not accountable to what has now happened".

The left might want to see a disaster play out to capitalize in the mid-term elections, laying the accountability directly on the president. The right might not have freedom of action because they fear a well-funded challenger for their seat.

In am interested in other people's opinions and ideas in this area. I agree it is too little discussed and analyzed. Please share your insights!

ilamont2• 1 year ago

I do think there is a pretty good chance that SCOTUS will rule these tariffs unconstitutional.

Unlikely. SCOTUS is cowed, as shown by the latest batch of rulings (https://www.npr.org/2025/04/08/nx-s1-5351799/scotus-probatio...). They want to avoid his ire, and interference.

Possibly, they are saving dry powder for a bigger fight.

matthewdgreen2• 1 year ago

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 shadow docket decision, just enabled the Trump administration to deport people under the Alien Enemies Act -- a law that requires a declared war or an "invasion or predatory incursion...by a foreign nation or government." So I wouldn't get too excited about the idea that they're going to make a big stand on tariffs.

paulddraper5• 1 year ago

I think that is true, strictly speaking.

But how do you justify all of the other trade deals made by other presidents?

Were those also unconstitutional? Or just Trump's because they went up not down.

piva004• 1 year ago

I'm starting to subscribe to the idea this was blatant market manipulation.

Trump is only out to make money, the guy never had any other thought in life since money gives him status, fame, and power.

It's a grift, as any other of his grifts, but now he can manipulate the whole stock market with his power.

There's nothing else that I can rationally come up with to explain this absurdity.

hn_acc13• 1 year ago

There's your problem - the word "rationally". NOTHING about MAGA / Trump is rational - it's all based on feelings.

usefulcat• 1 year ago

Trump is only out to make money

Nope. Not even close. He's all about power, and the appearance of strength. It's no coincidence that he looks up to Putin.

Money is almost always a means to an end, and this is no exception.

pera• 1 year ago

- April 7th: Spread rumours of a 90 days tariff pause which immediately triggers a market really, then claim it was "fake new", markets go down

- April 9th: "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT", then 4 hours later announce a 90 days tariff reduction, markets jump nearly 10%

This level of market manipulation orchestrated directly by a head of state is something you only see in totalitarian states.

The US is moving into a very serious situation. These people won't ever voluntarily leave the Oval Office.

stellalo• 1 year ago

Luckily the founding fathers thought of this

skyyler3• 1 year ago

If you're referring to 2A then I suggest you start building anti-aircraft weapons in your militias five years ago.

sirbutters• 1 year ago

Did you forget "/s"?

mateus1• 1 year ago

It's direct wealth transfer to his supporters, paid by opponents and people who can't play the market...

maronato2• 1 year ago

The situation is so absurd that I’m starting to believe the entire Musk vs. Navarro feud was just a ploy, and they’re all popping champagne bottles together now.

hello_computer2• 1 year ago

It's Elon's dogecoin pump & dump all over again. I should have kept an eye on twitter!

ryzvonusef• 1 year ago

On the one hand, this entire exercise has been (and continues to be) batship insane

....Otoh this is good in a meta sense, tells about the level of resilience of the capitalist system, I think we should treat this entire fiasco as one of those controlled forest fire sort of things.

Like...anytime someone tries to mention JIT or other corporate 'efficiency' nonsense, we can refer to these sort of shenanigans and shut them down.

92834092322• 1 year ago

I wouldn't call it the lede but also in this article is that he increased China tariffs to 125% which is funny. Let's just keep it going, 200% China tariffs! Why not? People weren't going to do business at the 54% tariff anyway.

glitchc2• 1 year ago

Trump is using fuzzing to find weaknesses in global trade. He's basically a security researcher at this point.

neogodless2• 1 year ago

Time to delete the production database to test our disaster recovery plan!

glitchc2• 1 year ago

Fail early, fail often.

wickedOne3• 1 year ago

i wonder why the rest of the world doesn't just come together for a while and stop trading / providing raw materials to the u.s. for let's say a year or so.

isn't this all just a huge pile of bluff poker?

tim3339• 1 year ago

A lot of people have jobs dependent on business as usual. You don't want to just fire the workers for a year.

wickedOne3• 1 year ago

the u.s. is not the only country other countries trade with so firing people should not have to be the result as long as you divert?

paulddraper5• 1 year ago

stop trading to the u.s.

That makes as much sense as a hunger strike over food rations.

wickedOne3• 1 year ago

because the u.s. is the only country the rest of the world can trade with?

arandomusername19• 1 year ago

Because their economies would suffer heavily? That's why they are upset about the tariffs in the first place.

uwagar• 1 year ago

this is what BRICS floated trying to remove the USD as reserve currency. now they gone all quiet when trump threatened 100% tariffs.

plus remember trump could threaten nuclear attack on the ringleader.

the_gipsy3• 1 year ago

The USD will be removed at some point if trump keeps his dumb antics.

t1E9mE7JTRjf• 1 year ago

they don't have TDS

UltraSane• 1 year ago

The only people who suffer from TDS are those who voted for him.

mppm• 1 year ago

The stock market today seriously reeks of insider trading. Most stocks were down pre-market, but suddenly went up at 9:30 when the big boys joined the trading. And that right after the announcement of further escalation with China. I was really wondering about that, but it seems clear in retrospect that some people were ahead of the curve by a few hours.

maronato2• 1 year ago

Trump posted on social media this morning that it was a great time to buy. A couple of days ago, he said people should be buying low and that it was a great time to get rich.

I’m convinced this was his plan all along, and his friends were all in it.

picafrost2• 1 year ago

Very sad to see what is happening to the US. Sadder still to see it celebrated and defended by a large portion of the country. From over here in Europe, the apparent lack of accountability in the US right now is unbelievable. Where are the adults?

TheOtherHobbes3• 1 year ago

The supposed adults are making bank.

The political subtext is "Follow me and I will make you extremely rich."

Congress, the Senate, and the Supreme Court won't touch him after this.

m0llusk2• 1 year ago

It is sad that opposition is not being acknowledged. There was a determined effort to restore Canada's tariffs to what they were that passed the Senate and was then blocked by an unusual maneuver from the speaker of the house which in turn got him excoriated by some Republicans in congress. Some of the biggest conservative power players and possibly the most famous and successful conservative lawyers are teaming up to challenge emergency executive tariff powers in court. Meanwhile US citizens retain high confidence in elections and Republicans nationwide are complaining in a panic that these moves will turn their precincts Democratic for decades.

But of course you are totally right. No adults anywhere. Keep thinking that Europe can count on others to pay for its defense while buying all the energy they need from Moscow. At least you have adults in the room, right?

arandomusername19• 1 year ago

I'm from Europe. You should be focusing those questions on EU, we have much bigger problems. Mass immigration has decimated Europe.

louthy8• 1 year ago

It hasn’t. Europe is still functioning perfectly well.

Let’s not start echoing far right talking points. Immigration is a topic that should be approached with measured language. Terms like ‘decimated’ is not helpful.

picafrost2• 1 year ago

It's true that Europe has its own problems. There are problems everywhere, at every level, from small towns to continents to the planet as a whole. This post is about the erratic actions of the current US administration. My comment is a small reflection about political trends in the US. What does Europe have to do with this?

It does not accomplish much when you try to redirect people with what-aboutisms. Mostly it just betrays your own biases and politics.

magicloop10• 1 year ago

"It’s the T-bills wot dun it."

That’s my read on why the U.S. just paused the global tariff hike to 10%.

From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury. Why? Because Uncle Sam has to refinance a mountain of debt this year, and the cost of that depends heavily on Treasury yields — especially the 10-year. That’s the rate that sets the tone for everything from mortgages to corporate borrowing.

So they tried to spook markets. Introduce global tariffs. Stir up uncertainty. And it worked—at first. Yields dipped. Traders moved to Treasuries as a typical flight-to-safety.

But then something flipped.

Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky. Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs — but whatever it was, yields started climbing. Fast.

At that point, the strategy backfired. The executive branch had no choice but to walk it back. So they paused the tariffs.

Because when your national budget depends on cheap debt, you can't afford a crisis of confidence in your bonds.

jddj• 1 year ago

Yeah, the bond market started saying firmly "stop fucking around" and an adult seemingly appeared in the room

pixelpoet• 1 year ago

I realise I'm asking for an imagined scenario but- who would this adult be, that somehow escaped the purge of competence and oversight in favour of sycophants, and how would they broach the topic with Trump (who of course wants to be the Big Boy and loves supplication)?

thfuran2• 1 year ago

That doesn't pass muster. If they had much interest in balancing the books, they wouldn't be ripping huge holes in revenue collection.

throwaway484762• 1 year ago

If they wanted to balance the books they'd print money and distribute it to US citizens.

magicloop10• 1 year ago

That's fair but I suggest that they are actually deficit hawks for the long term. In the short term, they've got financing troubles hence they care about the yield.

overfeed2• 1 year ago

If they had much interest in balancing the books, they wouldn't be ripping huge holes in revenue collection

That can be explained by the fact that the cabal also doesn't like paying taxes.

csomar3• 1 year ago

If your rate is 0% fixed (just a hypothetical), you can roll-over your bonds indefinitely for free. This means, in practical terms, your debt is 0.

alabastervlog6• 1 year ago

These "here's the actual reason they're doing this!" things rarely hold up under any amount of scrutiny.

Then again, they're tempting because the things they're doing are also really bad ways to accomplish Trump's stated goals.

dan_quixote• 1 year ago

Agreed - that's a huge indicator that they don't care about fixing the deficit. But they also don't want to be seen making it vastly worse.

marcosdumay6• 1 year ago

I don't think the GP argued they want to balance the books.

In fact, if they wanted to balance the books, they wouldn't care about the interest rate. The only reason to bet your economy into reducing the interest is if you want to go deeply negative on the books.

motorest• 1 year ago

That doesn't pass muster. If they had much interest in balancing the books, they wouldn't be ripping huge holes in revenue collection.

It's not about balancing the books. It's about not making a problem far worse.

You remember the global financial crisis of 2008? The reason most of the bailed out countries requested bailouts was their bonds spiraling out of control when they had to refinance their debt. That was the primary reason they reached out to the likes of IMF and had to undergo austerity programs.

The Trump administration put the US on that path with their global tarrifs and provoking their main trading partners, specially China.

monero-xmr3• 1 year ago

I disagree. Trump has been threatening tariffs since 2016. Each step he gets closer to significant tariffs. This time he stepped back after they seemed real.

Now businesses know he really, super means it this time, so they get another reprieve. But next time it would be hard to claim Trump didn’t warn them.

magicloop10• 1 year ago

I agree it's classic brinksmanship and the tariff views he has are genuine and long held. But his numerous signals to the Fed to ask to lower interest rates and the commitment to DOGE (which has the effect of lowering yields) is another strand in his thinking. The two are in conflict causing the flip-flop effect in short term policy.

shaky-carrousel2• 1 year ago

Trump has been talking about tariffs since the eighties.

wk_end• 1 year ago

Trump has been on Team Tariff for 40 years. “There is no 3D chess, he’s just eating the pieces.”

eigart• 1 year ago

It remains to be seen to what extent this restores confidence.

neilwilson• 1 year ago

The only aggregate alternative to holding T-bills is to hold dollar bank accounts. At which point the bank holds the T-bills instead or the Fed does as balancing assets to the account liability.

It could all be refinanced to three month bills without any issue at all.

Ultimately balance sheets have to balance. In a floating exchange rate system there is no aggregate out.

magicloop10• 1 year ago

You are correct on the mechanism here. But my point is adjacent to that. Whilst you always get a buyer for the debt (here the bank), it is the yield that matters as the re-financing cost cannot be escaped irrespective of the owner.

macspoofing2• 1 year ago

From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury

You're making it seem that there's a plan ... but what if this is just regular incompetence coupled with capricious behavior from a chaos agent?

I'm watching various officials give interviews and all of them are non-committal as it pertains to expectations. Why? Because none of them actually know!!! Trump has arbitrarily and capriciously changed "the plan" many times.

magicloop10• 1 year ago

I'd like to expand out why I hold this belief.

The political cohort behind the president is roughly in two halves. The first half are the original MAGA crowd (looking out for the working class, pro-liberty, anti-woke, etc.). The second half are the billionaire crowd.

The second group are active on pod casts, on Twitter/X, and are partly represented in government (directly or as advisors). An easy way to follow up on these people is to watch the All In Podcast or their related social media connections.

What these folks have said for a long time is that if USA stay on the same path, the USA goes broke after 10 years. So if you have long term investment in the USA, you lose your fortune in 10+ years.

This is the key motivation for their involvement in the current executive branch of government. This is why the DOGE program is so well supported by them.

If you lose the battle to reduce the 10-year Treasury yield, you lose the billionaires because they stand to make meaningful losses on a 10 year horizon.

I recognize the plight of the common citizen here; they are the plurality. But the big political levers come from these billionaires (absent a grass roots supported leader in the wings).

jpmattia• 1 year ago

James Carville in the 90s: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

magicloop10• 1 year ago

I agree. The bond markets are the ultimate heavy hitter. They have government level impact. See also: The French Revolution.

rcarr2• 1 year ago

The name's Bond, Market Bond.

slg5• 1 year ago

Genuinely wondering why so many people are still giving the Trump administration this much benefit of the doubt that their moves are strategically sound? We're really still doing the whole "3D chess" thing with this guy after he has shown over and over again that he mostly just acts on impulse and the primary qualification for his advisors is loyalty over any type of intelligence or expertise?

muzani5• 1 year ago

A lot of this stuff is on a YouTube education level, not even a degree. I would be shocked if the US does not have a bunch of economic advisors who tell them what problems there are and what should be done. They've probably mapped out all the next steps. Most US presidents are Harvard-level smart, but the White House has been around long enough to find a way to deliver reports to the simpler ones.

There's a lot of obvious big problems - confidence in the USD, debt rising faster than GDP can catch up, military overextension, China's rise outpacing US, inequality, inaccessible education and health care, opioid crisis, etc.

Trump has a good eye for identifying this - that's why he won the election despite all his weaknesses. It's clear he knows some of this but doesn't understand it - his comments on a BRICS currency, for example. Yes, a "BRICS currency" would threaten Pax Americana but it's on literally nobody's mind.

I feel like, if anything, he's an overplanner. A smarter leader would think, these moves will have unplanned side effects. Trump makes a lot of roundabout moves like DOGE. These moves have a target, but he hasn't thought about the side effects. And when a crisis like COVID hits, it disrupts the complex plans, which is why he reacts so poorly to them.

gsanderson5• 1 year ago

Baffles me too. His ignorance is astonishing.

mrandish2• 1 year ago

Genuinely wondering why so many people are still giving the Trump administration this much benefit of the doubt that their moves are strategically sound?

Since I'm one of 'those people' who's been willing to grant Trump some benefit of the doubt in the past, I'll respond with my take. tl;dr Trump's handling of the tariffs have been such disaster, there's simply no possibility it was based on a strategically sound plan. So, in answer to your question, this episode has caused me to substantially foreclose my prior willingness to grant Trump some benefit of the doubt.

To be clear, while I've tried to remain open-minded re: Trump I've never felt that he's especially smart and certainly not someone I'd ever personally like or hang out with but I'm also one of those contrarians who doesn't think every politician or public figure needs to be someone I personally like or approve of in a moral sense. I've also been willing to concede that some things done by the executive branch during his first term were generally positive (whether because of or in spite of Trump isn't clear). I also think his policies and statements have been subject to an unprecedented degree of negative spin in the media - sometimes well-deserved but always hyped overwhelmingly to the negative. So I made an effort to look past the constant headlines of, essentially, "orange man bad in all possible ways." I also decided to ignore Trump's own bizarrely extreme pronouncements and focus only on what he really put into practice and, most importantly, the tangible real-world impact of those actions on the broad population and economy over time (not the extrapolated predictions in the media).

However, even to me, how he's handled this tariff thing has been a complete shit show. I've spent a fair bit of time trying to understand the various explanations, contextualizations and even 'hidden grand plan' theories proposed by some and they simply aren't plausible. It's not a 'master negotiator strategy' because he asked for concessions but never made any concrete proposals of quid pro quo. There was no attempt at serious negotiation with most major trading partners (according to the WSJ) and thus no possibility of meaningful deals.

Now suddenly (somewhat) reversing course like this a few days after going so extreme and then publicly doubling down on his long-term commitment to the 'grand strategy' is unbelievably damaging to any remaining shred of credibility his administration may have had. It nukes any possibility that he was doing a 'crazy guy on the subway' strategy of punching his adversaries in the face and making them believe he was so nuts he'd saw off his own arm just to keep beating them over the head with it - all to cleverly convince them to make meaningful concessions they'd never make any other way. Yeah, well now that he blinked in less than a week, nothing he can do will ever make them believe that. I mean, if that was the plan, it was a terrible plan and poorly executed to boot, but flipping like this is even worse.

All I can figure is that it was a 'crazy guy' plan but that he intended to keep it going for several months and then, when his opponents were bloodied enough he'd open negotiations and "win" in a master stroke. Except he completely miscalculated the degree of economic destruction he'd cause in U.S. markets and has now had to not only fold but reveal he was playing a weak bluff all along. I'm struggling to come up with any way this could have been worse for the U.S. and Trump's interests. After this, it's hard to imagine any trading partner negotiating in good faith, or perhaps, at all with Trump over tariffs in the next 90 days. The only rational strategy for them is to play along and gather info while conceding nothing meaningful and simply wait and see what Trump's ultimately going to do long term.

As far as I'm concerned, I bent over backward to grant Trump some benefit of the doubt and give him a chance to prove himself but the tariffs have been so bungled they're impossible to put it in any positive light. So far, it appears to be an epic disaster of hubris and naive miscalculation.

probably_wrong• 1 year ago

I don't think that Trump himself is competent, but I'm not be so sure about the people around him. The effort it took to put him above the law was at least a decade in the making, so clearly someone knows what they're doing.

I don't think it's a coincidence, for instance, that Steve Banon's strategy of "flooding the zone" looks exactly as the type of chaos currently coming from the White House.

marcosdumay6• 1 year ago

I dunno. Somebody literally wrote a guidebook for him to follow, but I haven't even glanced over it.

The stuff I've seen people quote from the book have all been stupid, but the kind of stupidity seems to be a "do X, so you'll get Y" where "Y" is really bad and the author thinks it's good. So I guess I do expect some kind of coherence from him.

That said, I don't remember anybody claiming Project 25 talks about tariffs.

UncleMeat2• 1 year ago

This makes some sense... but they didn't pause the tariffs. There's still a 10% tariff on everybody (including on top of Mexico and Canada, who were previously exempted from the tariffs announced last week) and the tariff on China continues to rise to preposterous proportions.

matt-p10• 1 year ago

Would it have been too inflationary/recessionary to impose these crazy tarrifs on 'rest of world' AND increase china to 125% at the same time so he simply had to sacrifice one to do the other?

greatpatton• 1 year ago

exactly and I think it's shocking that everyone is just repeating lies without putting them in context.

johnnyanmac7• 1 year ago

Because when your national budget depends on cheap debt, you can't afford a crisis of confidence in your bonds.

Well the US is still having a dick measuring contest with its largest importer, so no worries. We'll still get plenty of crisis from that alone.

AnimalMuppet3• 1 year ago

I'm not saying you're wrong. But 10-year yields are up for the day, so if he was trying to calm the bond markets, it didn't work.

roland35• 1 year ago

I have a feeling the real reason is just that trump is a moron. I think a lot of people are reading it like poop sneered on the bathroom wall.

ZeroGravitas• 1 year ago

It's scary to think he's just not got a clue and doing whatever he thinks of in the moment isn't it?

I mean the guy who doesn't understand tariffs, at all, but has publicly loved tariffs for 40 years in charge of tariff policy. That's disturbing to contemplate head on.

Much better to invent some comforting fantasy of secret plots being carried out semi-competently to achieve nebulous but vaguely noble goals.

gsanderson5• 1 year ago

Donald is weak. He was always going to fold. Once China and the EU called his bluff and retaliated, he was done. Lasted less than 24 hours.

matt-p10• 1 year ago

Sir, the tariff on china has just increased to 125%.

I don't know why he held off on the other countries, but choose to go to "war" with China.

matwood7• 1 year ago

The EU actually executed some strategy. First they said they would love 0/0 tariffs, which sounds fair to pretty much anyone. And when that didn't fly they put on selective reciprocal 25% tariffs. What Trump did looks even more like a clown show.

baq2• 1 year ago

The tariffs that he kept on would be nothing to sneeze at in more… civilized times. The market overreacted, as was priced in the vix at 50+. We are not out of the woods yet.

kalleboo2• 1 year ago

He didn't even know that the EU had put in tariffs until a journalist asked him at the press conference after he announced the pause.

matwood7• 1 year ago

But then something flipped.

The bond market is always the adult in the room. The UK PM lasted like 44 days when the bond market pushed her out [1]. In this case, the flip was that all the chaos led to people leaving behind the USD completely. Trumps view of the US/World is ~30+ years out of date. There are other stable places to put money now where it used to only be USD.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/uk-prime-minister-liz-truss-...

sschueller• 1 year ago

The cabbage outlasted her...

https://x.com/jaayjayAT/status/1908793907976040839?t=aP60h4w...

throwaway20174• 1 year ago

The refinance is a real issue, but it doesn't matter too much cause the Fed can (and will) always intervene. They can soak up any supply to push the 10 year down.

Same reason why it doesn't matter if China etc.. wants our treasuries. Fed is always there to buy them.

rcarr2• 1 year ago

I'm not an economist but I believe this is only the case so long as USD is the global reserve currency. If that ceases to be the case, the Fed has a lot less power to print money and inflate debt away. I believe this is the case Ray Dalio has been making for some time now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8

jdc0589• 1 year ago

im not an economist, I have no valid opinion on if this is right or not.

BUT, I actually started looking at moving more of the stable bond/treasury holding bit of my portfolio to foreign funds recently (in addition to moving more of the stock/mutual fund balance to international stuff).

If I'm thinking about that as an individual private citizen of the US, I can't imagine what actual professionals are thinking about.

greenavocado2• 1 year ago

Most foreign mutual funds and ETFs are classified as Passive Foreign Investment Companies (PFICs). PFIC investments face complex and often punitive tax treatment. Gains may be taxed at the highest marginal ordinary income tax rate (not the lower capital gains rate). Additional interest charges may apply. Annual filing requirements via Form 8621 for each PFIC

seo-speedwagon• 1 year ago

Trump's obsession with tariffs dates back to 1988 when he lost an auction for the piano from the movie Casablanca to a Japanese buyer. Afterwards, he started complaining about how all these other countries are ripping America off, and here we are.

lysace5• 1 year ago

sigh

fhub2• 1 year ago

One Source: https://www.wita.org/trade-news/trumps-love-for-tariffs-bega...

csomar3• 1 year ago

Yeah... if that was their reasoning then they are as dumb as a sack of rocks. The rates went up further after the tariffs pause today.

Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky.

No shit. Having an inconsistent policy because of clear incompetence (xx Dimensional chess) is a very bad sign for the world largest economy. At some point this will hit the bonds which is the foundation of this economy.

watwut4• 1 year ago

Trump floating the idea of defaulting on debt on purpose certainly did not helped.

Generally the president acting like an insane maniac about to become dictatoe makes bonds look less trustworthy.

justin662• 1 year ago

Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky.

Owning US debt is also simply less relevant to countries that are going to be trading less with the US. Countries which are ratcheting up tariffs with the US, for example.

digianarchist4• 1 year ago

The T-Bill auction today went off without issue and that was before this announcement.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/treasury-bond-auction-today...

magicloop10• 1 year ago

That's a great data point. Thanks!

sethammons• 1 year ago

so the uncertainty in the market drove investors to T-Bills, driving up their price and lowering their yield, effectively making servicing the national debt marginally cheaper. By 0.03%, which I imagine stacks up with trillions of dollars compounding.

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

T-Bill auction today went off without issue and that was before this announcement

We're nowhere near the primary auctions failing. That would literally require a full financial crisis.

hayst4ck5• 1 year ago

Incompetence is way more dangerous than people realize.

These tariffs are China's Four Pests campaign. Mao, a very trump like figure, decided to protect Chinese crops by destroying sparrows that were picking at them. Killing sparrows killed a predator of insects which did more damage to crops. This coupled with reality denying policies and ignoring experts led to one of the most devastating famines the world has ever experienced.

Hand waiving away this policy that denies reality and hurts America as a rational plan that went wrong is absolutely dangerous. Killing sparrows was "rational" in the same way these tariffs are. Authoritarians believe in power over reason. They do not like submitting to the authority of those who have studied problems because it is an attack on their own supremacy, so they fail to predict second order effects, which were likely obvious.

The damage this administration is doing to trust will be felt for generations. An agreement with America will have no value. No world leader will care what we say, they will only look at what we do. They will see power we have not as potentially being used for their own defense, but as a potential attack on their own sovereignty and they will wish to see us weakened so that they can spend less resources trying to determine our intentions.

magicreadu4• 1 year ago

Both you and OP are not looking at this from the right angle. The goal here is to decouple US from China. In the meantime, tariffs are raised on every country to gauge which side they are on. Once US knows who the allies are, they will negotiate to have those allies put up massive tariffs on China as well to prevent transshipping.

US wants nothing to do with China. As the biggest consumer economy in the world, the have that right.

And China has shown that agreement with them has no value. Remember that China promised trump in term 1 to massively import US goods and reduce fentanyl, in part to slow trumps tariff down. They did neither of those things. Trump hasn’t forgotten that.

spacemadness• 1 year ago

People are so desperate for this to be rational. Which itself is entirely irrational given the information at hand.

ajross4• 1 year ago

There is absolutely a Cultural Revolution feel to the communication by and around the president. See e.g. Bill Ackman's fully-prostrated worshipful response on Twitter this morning. The guy is a successful billionaire! And he needs to sound like a literal cult member in public lest he lose influence.

woooooo• 1 year ago

If we're going full Mao, we'd be remiss if we didn't note that their plan for industry during the cultural revolution was "the proletariat will own small smelting operations next to their house". It checks out ideologically, workers controlling the means of production.. it just didn't work in reality.

Reminds me a lot of the thought process around having more manufacturing in the US by slapping tariffs around.

sfblah5• 1 year ago

My opinion on this is that the damage has already been done. Successive administrations have already loaded up debt massively and participated in a Ponzi scheme with the Fed to pretend asset valuations in the US make sense. Sooner or later the chickens will come home to roost, and valuation multiples in the US will come to resemble those that have existed throughout history, and those which exist in all other parts of the world currently.

When this happens, there will be a big recession, and that is exactly the moment companies will start deploying AI in earnest to save money. This will create a downward spiral.

Yes, the Trump administration is incompetent. But, if you insist on blaming an administration, I would propose Obama and Biden as more reasonable culprits. It was Obama who presided over the massive Fed intervention into markets that enabled unbridled government spending increases. It was Biden who presided over the most problematic parts of the Covid response. Trump is just an idiot. Obama and Biden are actually bad guys.

boringg• 1 year ago

Correction. Mao is Mao like. And you could call Trump a Mao like person, not the other way around.

casey22• 1 year ago

Or this is like the long history of American tariffs which gave it world class industry. We are in the midst of a 4th industrial revolution and all this insane manufacturing tech being developed just gets shipped over to china because nobody in the US wants to touch it for fear of failing.

For every four pests Mao had 100 successful projects that nobody talks about. Harm reduction is not an optimal strategy for any game.

milesvp2• 1 year ago

Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky

There's also a more basic answer to why US debt got more expensive. There is no such thing as a "trade deficit". You cannot import something without exporting something else. That something else, in almost 100% of the situations, is dollars. What do you do with dollars, if there's nothing you want to buy? You buy debt. So, every trade deficit ultimately tends to export debt. We have long known that government debt is proportional to trade deficits.

The problem with tariffs, in this context, is that they are being used as a signal that we don't want to sell people dollars anymore, explicitly saying "no more trade deficits". In doing so we are choking off the supply of dollars used to buy debt (rather abruptly), so that US debt is chasing fewer dollars and has to give a bigger yield as a result.

What's worse, is that because we are signalling that the tariffs are meant to be permanent, and we're seeing reciprocal tariffs as a result. When that happens, it means that using dollars in the future will purchase fewer US goods, so the time discount of money has gone up too. Further driving up yields to make bonds attractive enough to sell.

lawlessone• 1 year ago

isn't this also kinda opposed to having the dollar as the dominant world currency?

Lots of countries settle trades between each other using dollars.

Making it harder to get those dollars will leave them seeking to use something else to trade.

PaulDavisThe1st7• 1 year ago

You cannot import something without exporting something else.

This is incorrect when your national currency happens to be the global reserve currency. All it requires is for the other country to be willing to accept dollars in payment.

[ EDIT: even that's wrong. All it requires is someone being willing to accept dollars, either in payment or as part of a currency exchange. ]

ToucanLoucan2• 1 year ago

The real issue is people are still treating this reactionary buffoonery as if it's a trade policy that warrants critique. It isn't. Trump is a fucking idiot and he has surrounded himself with other fucking idiots and they and the reactionary base of fucking idiots they've created are cheering him on for doing fucking idiot things.

A journalist successfully reverse-engineered the likely formula used to arrive at the figures for each nation, and it's not only implemented stupidly, it's also wrong from first principles. It's the same thing an actual school child might come up with if you asked them to. This is the same kind of "economic policy" cooked up by dumbasses on reddit who sincerely believe they are qualified to "fix US trade."

If our congress wasn't also packed full of ineffectual liberals and other fucking idiots, he'd be impeached by now for sheer incompetence.

It's the same issue we had in the last Trump admin. This nonsense is elevated to undue credibility by serious people discussing it seriously. It shouldn't be debated, it should be mocked, relentlessly, mercilessly, cruelly. As should Trump himself, as should his supporters, as should his sycophantic followers. Mock, belittle, make fun of, bully, parody, just continuously until every single one of these people refuses to approach a microphone.

insane_dreamer5• 1 year ago

We have long known that government debt is proportional to trade deficits.

And so far we've been cool with that because it:

- continues to make the USD the dominant global reserve currency, strengthening our economic and political clout

- allows us to borrow cheaply to finance our military and whatever else we're spending $ on

creer• 1 year ago

US debt was mostly being bought because "safe". The US being seen as politically and economically stable and the center of the world. Right now that argument is much harder to make.

And meanwhile there is always a lot of US debt that needs to be rolled over (i.e. re-issued to a willing buyer.)

Except for the data point of today's 10-Year Treasury Auction which had a normal, usual result.

ajross4• 1 year ago

This is all correct, but it's a first principles explanation that doesn't explain why US bonds, and in particular the 10-year note, spiked today. Yes, eventually excessive tariffs would have that result. They literally hadn't even taken effect yet. So this doesn't explain the bond motion today.

Someone was dumping, we don't know who or why. But the answer to that question is a lot (a lot) more important than people realize, and certainly more so than the immediate market motion or tariff policy.

Honestly if the answer was "The PRC was unloading bonds to send a message" that's sort of the best option, as they have limited wiggle room to continue to do so without wrecking their own financial situation.

If it's "The market as a whole lost confidence in US debt", then we're fucked no matter what Trump does next.

skybrian• 1 year ago

It's usually not "dollars." It could be any investment or service that could be bought using dollars. And calling foreign investment an "export" is just confusing.

kamaal• 1 year ago

>You cannot import something without exporting something else. That something else, in almost 100% of the situations, is dollars.

If you want the world to trade using your currency. You have to give them dollars. That is buy something from them. That is, imports.

All of this comes a section of US politics not being able to understand why the dollar standard even exists.

intended4• 1 year ago

You are exporting services. Vast amounts of highly profitable services.

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

we are choking off the supply of dollars used to buy debt (rather abruptly), so that US debt is chasing fewer dollars and has to give a bigger yield as a result

Well, also, the holders of our debt now need liquidity. So they sell this famously-liquid asset we've been selling them for decades.

rayiner2• 1 year ago

Boomers really fucked on the economy to Sunday didn’t they?

Ar-Curunir• 1 year ago

You are assigning too much rationality to this group of people. The cruelty is the point, not some hare-brained scheme to push down yield or whatever.

mfitton2• 1 year ago

I think this would be expected though, no? Sure, there's flight to safety, but you're also reducing exports to the US, reducing the number of dollars flowing to foreign nationals, which reduces the demand for treasury bills, which an excess of dollars would often be used to buy to have an inflation-"proof" store for your dollars without currency risk. You would also expect devaluation of the dollar from tariffs / trade-war, which I would also expect to cause selling of t-bills in favor of local currencies

maxerickson2• 1 year ago

The yield really isn't that big a deal. It's hundreds of billions of dollars over decades if it moves by 1 percent. Compare that to tax cuts leading to trillion dollar annual deficits.

I mean, it could well be that they are risking the stability of the US economy to save money on refinancing the debt, but that would be a stupid thing to be doing.

louthy8• 1 year ago

Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs

Or, maybe, and hear me out on this, maybe it was Donald Trump literally saying he might default on US debt.

Maybe.

Spooky23• 1 year ago

I think you’re projecting more advanced thinking here than you can give them credit for. The administration doesn’t have military guys keeping discipline.

You have Trump who has an instinctive affinity for tariffs, and a wack pack of various characters doing whatever. I’d guess they thought the Chinese would roll over rather that start dumping bonds.

jmyeet• 1 year ago

Uncertainty is a massive problem and may itself bring on a recession more than any tariffs. It's a huge factor in the oil market crash that's currently going on. I've seen one oil expert say that Obama was the best president for the oil industry because he did... nothing. There were no kneejerk policy changes on a weekly basis. And anything requiring large capital investments thrives on certainty.

As for Treasury yields spiking, that was no accident. As part of China's (justified) retaliation to the tariffs, they started selling off 10 year Treasuries intentaionlly to spike the rates because that's one thing the Trump administration seemed to care about.

I still don't know what the endgame is/was here. Some seem to think devaluing the dollar was the goal to boost exports but also to effectively devalue US soverieng debt. There's precedent for this eg FDR's sovereign devaluation of the dollar and Reagan's Plaza Accord.

solfox• 1 year ago

No. This isn't an economic policy.

It’s time to stop bending over backwards pretending that Trump’s tariff threats are part of a coherent economic strategy. They’re not.

When you drop the economic lens and view tariffs as a political tool for consolidating power, everything suddenly makes sense.

Here’s how it works: - Tariffs hurt corporations. They jack up costs, raise costs. Executives know this. The markets know this. - But there’s a loophole: carve-outs. Trump has the power to exempt individual companies or industries from these tariffs. That means if you’re a CEO and your business is on the line, your only option is to go to Trump and ask for mercy. - That’s not policy. It’s leverage. It creates a system where corporate leaders must show loyalty to get relief. Not because it’s good for the economy, but because it’s good for Trump. Maybe it's public support for his initiatives, attacks on his enemies. Whatever it is, it gives him political power.

This mirrors the playbook used by authoritarian leaders throughout history. Look at Putin. His use of tariffs wasn’t about growing Russia’s economy—it was about punishing enemies, rewarding loyalty, and projecting control. Tariffs became a way to rewire power dynamics.

MVissers2• 1 year ago

Also, this trade war pushes the USA close to a war with China over Taiwan and maybe Panama Canal, which is exactly what you want as an authoritarian to stay on longer. Find an enemy and use emergency powers to maintain control.

derangedHorse• 1 year ago

I don’t think this checks out. They didn’t walk any tariffs back until after the auction saw strong demand. It went opposite the way one would think setting the fall in bond prices the previous night.

SubiculumCode• 1 year ago

Being boring is profitable.

You want to do tariffs for national security reasons? Okay. I get it. Now get congress to pass a bill levying the tariff, have that bill be smart, encourage not just on-shoring, but also near-shoring (Mexico, Canada) of key manufacturing and minerals, apply the tariffs more strongly against the key geopolitical rivals (China), implemented in a graded, predictable manner. Do not piss of every ally in the world, in general pursuing this hierarchy U.S. > Mexico, Canada > European, African, and Pacific Allies > China, Russia. Finally, for key , and highly specific strategic industries, provide subsidies.

reverendsteveii2• 1 year ago

I'd believe you if he hadn't already flipflopped on tariffs recently. I think it's much simpler than that: he's pulling whatever levers he has to squeeze everyone and then letting up the pressure on people who do what he wants. He already did this with Canada and Mexico, using tariffs to get them to make a show of border secy=urity.

mcshicks• 1 year ago

I find the most consistent explanation for Donald Trump is he does whatever is going to keep himself the top news story in the media. I don't think there's any deeply held belief other than if he doesn't think people are talking about him that's bad

grvdrm• 1 year ago

I start with this explanation too.

In his interview yesterday he mentioned that he won his weekend golf tournament. Of course he did, otherwise it wouldn’t be newsworthy (still isn’t, but oh well).

Then he asked the reporter if she saw that he won. I think he asked twice.

I look at that simple interaction as the most accurate model of his behavior. Are people talking about me? Good. Why aren’t people talking about me? I need to do something to make sure they do. He may very well have actual intelligence but it doesn’t seem obvious that it is the catalyst of anything he does.

rurp3• 1 year ago

I am extremely skeptical that a president and a party that massively increase the national debt every time they hold unified control, and whose single legislative goal this year is to do exactly that once again, is engaging in a sophisticated conspiracy to lower interest payments. If Trump and the GOP actually cared about the debt payments they wouldn't be arguing about how many trillions of dollars to add to it this year.

The much more likely scenario is that this is exactly what it looks like: an incompetent and corrupt president flailing around. Tariffs are an excellent tool for soliciting bribes since there are any number of ways various groups can be exempted, and this type of abuse has often happened historically. The ham-fisted way they have been implemented has done a great job of getting Trump attention. I've never seen anything to make me think that Trump cares more about the long term health of the country over getting bribes and attention for himself.

insane_dreamer5• 1 year ago

Because when your national budget depends on cheap debt, you can't afford a crisis of confidence in your bonds.

True. The odd thing is that the previous tariffs announcements on supposed allies, plus all the other sabre-rattling that Trump has been doing, NATO-bashing, flipping on Ukraine, etc., had already triggered a crisis of confidence. So what did they expect? That unexpectedly unleashing of wildly unreasonable and poorly-calculated tariffs would inspire _more_ confidence? If getting investors to flock to T-bills was the goal, it was always bound to fail. (It only worked in the short term because T-bills are the default in a time of market uncertainty; but when it became clear that the uncertainty was caused not by the market, but by the government's behavior, well then T-bills don't look so good anymore).

anigbrowl7• 1 year ago

Correct. It seems to me the increased bond yields payments will significantly exceed revenue raised from tariffs. This is imho a bad long-term signal. I very much doubt the markets will just return to normal after the extreme volatility of the last few days - the huge tariffs on China will cause a lot of economic pain within weeks, and the administration's bellicosity toward Canada and NATO do not project stability and rational decision-making.

Besides the financial uncertainty, I doubt businesses want to make huge capital investments within the US to re/build factories in such a febrile environment. Will they be 'encouraged' to make 'donations' or purchase Trump golf club memberships? Will their foreign management staff be abruptly deported if someone in the administration sours on their country of origin? Will they wake up one day to find they've been denounced by conservative influencers?

kenjackson• 1 year ago

"From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury. Why?"

None of leaked conversations or prior discussions indicate anything like this. Peter Navarro has no even slightly nuanced agenda. He's been on record for years about this. I think their position was much more that they'd drive foreign tariffs down and would be able to make other demands against other countries, and they underestimated the tolerance even their base would have.

straydusk• 1 year ago

The idea that Trump had a goal as sophisticated as that is just hilarious.

addicted• 1 year ago

Yeah but the damage is done.

A safe haven isn’t much of a safe haven if that’s where the fire has started.

confidantlake• 1 year ago

Why is this weird conspiratorial 5d chess theory voted to the top?

caycep• 1 year ago

this seems like an awfully convoluted and self defeating way to drive down bond yields....

lossolo• 1 year ago

Yeah, that seems accurate.

"Alarm inside the Treasury Department over signs of distress in the US government bond market played a key role President Donald Trump’s decision to hit pause on his “reciprocal” tariff regime, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent raised those concerns directly to Trump in their meeting that preceded the announcement, underscoring the concerns shared by White House economic officials who had briefed the president on the accelerating selloff in the US Treasury market earlier in the day.

The market turmoil has rattled administration officials and market participants because it’s the exact opposite of what historically occurs in moments of global economic crisis or volatility. US Treasuries are considered the safest corner of the market. It’s the place investors across the globe flee toward with the assurance that the dominant US role in the global financial system will ensure asset safety.

But at the same moment Trump’s tariffs were causing foreign leaders to question the durability of longstanding US security and economic alliances, the rapid selloff of safe-haven assets raised concern that financial markets have similar concerns.

Trump acknowledged he’d been watching the bond market, telling reporters after the announcement the market is “very tricky.”

A spike in yields in the 10-year benchmark was of particular concern for Treasury officials. When the yields rise, US consumers face higher costs on things like mortgage rates for homes and financing costs for businesses."

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-tariffs-cnn-tow...

hammock• 1 year ago

something flipped.

China dumped 500B in treasuries and the basis trade blew up is what happened

Tariff deals were still going to happen regardless. The pause is a stop gap for the basis trade (20+x levered), of which an uncontrolled unwinding threatens the entire financial system. Fed already had a bailout facility ready as a plan B. Too big to fail and all that

greenavocado2• 1 year ago

It's okay, the Fed has been insolvent at least two years now https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3955889-the-fed-is-bankr...

keepamovin• 1 year ago

Sounds like a sage take (where do I study economics?), but why do people doubt the meaning is as straightforward as the messaging: during campaigning trump said he would rectify the unfair tariffs, and in the lead-up and since election he has talked lovingly about tariffs, with the goal being (as almost everything trump) domestic fortification through jobs, industry, and generating revenue from those who have abused the US largesse to enrich themselves - and now balk at a just correction.

I think there is a backdrop/larger picture (probably nuanced and multifaceted levers against all other parties negotiating), but the main I think is to shake up the global economic landscape to make it easier to improve it. Reset.

I see a lot of complex takes on here that require quite a lot of sophisticated theories...and while I enjoy the complexity and the perspectives (and - wish I had studied economics to really grok them), I think it's really just as simple as they say. And what they say they're doing makes sense.

Maybe the truth is no one really knows what will happen, and so it's a bold move but we'll see. But I believe they're doing what they think is right for America to strengthen the country, just as they say - not some 3 degree removed chess strategy, just simple.

mempko• 1 year ago

This sounds sensible but that's not what happened. The government debt is not an issue. Trump is more concerned about the stock market, and the market sent him a clear message.

ctrlp• 1 year ago

The T-bill strategy wasn't a secret. Why they walked it back could also be attributed to bringing trade partners to heel at a point of maximum leverage. Or a lack of resolve in leadership. Or messaging and opportunism.

Will it pay off? Who knows. If it does, it will go down as one of the greatest gambits in modern history. If not, perhaps the end of dollar hegemony? End of the Global American Empire? Or nothing at all?

partiallypro3• 1 year ago

I honestly don't think this was their overall goal (it doesn't logically make sense, given tax receipts dip during recessions and governments often take on even more debt,) but I do think that is why they blinked.

cavisne• 1 year ago

These complex 4D chess strategies never really pan out. Maybe someone in the administration thinks that was the goal but not Trump.

During the campaign Trump said he wanted 10 percent tariffs on the world and 60 percent tariffs on China. After all the noise we are now at… 10 percent tariffs with the world and 125 percent tariffs on China (pending negotiation with China).

vkou3• 1 year ago

If your goal is 'lower the rate at which you'll refinance a bit of debt by a quarter of a percentage point', blowing up your export economy, import and tourism industry, and introducing a national 40% sales tax seems like a really weird way to achieve it.

Given that all of those things would torpedo your ability to actually service debt, both new and old.

But what do I know? /s

KoolKat23• 1 year ago

This makes a lot of sense, although I wouldn't give them the credit of being so coherent in their understanding/targeting of what they were doing.

In my opinion the reason it backfired, what they proposed wouldn't merely cause a confidence in crisis, but also implied a fundamental shift in the market and the way it worked, this would also have to be priced in, hence the drop. There was no longer necessarily a "buy the dip, the market will go up at some point".

zzzeek• 1 year ago

that assumes a massive amount of economic understanding and intelligence on the part of the President that has simply been completely unobserved for his entire career.

occam's razor provides much better explanations here. He's an idiot obsessed with dominance games and thinks a tariff on a country means that country pays a tax to the US. He thinks trade deficits are bad, just like if I buy a toaster from Target, now I have a "trade deficit" with Target and I need to find something they'll buy from me.

He's a total dangerous moron and these attempts to come up with 11-dimensional chess rationalizations are misguided.

fhub2• 1 year ago

Trump has been in love with tariffs since at least 1988. See https://www.wita.org/trade-news/trumps-love-for-tariffs-bega....

energy1232• 1 year ago

Most upvoted comment is AI generated slop.

Andaith• 1 year ago

This makes too much sense to be the real reason, if you ask me.

I think it’s being reversed because it cratered global oil prices and that would be a terrible horrible very bad thing _for Russia_.

marcosdumay6• 1 year ago

But then something flipped.

All those long 8 weeks that people spent complaining about soft power, and the US government spent trying to gaslight people saying that they don't even use the power... The people complaining were talking about something real.

mizzao2• 1 year ago

What about the insider trading that this facilitated? A few parties made HUGE profits with last-minute option trades today.

cjohnson318• 1 year ago

Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs

Maybe it was the idea of 4 more years of shenanigans like this that freaked everyone out.

TomK32• 1 year ago

But then something flipped. Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky. Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs — but whatever it was, yields started climbing. Fast.

So, it's not this unstable president, his insult-spewing vice-president and his buddy the hyperactive billionaire manipulating a social network for Russia and China that makes the rest world want to avoid the USA for the next few years?

intended4• 1 year ago

This again sees more logic in this than there exists.

America doesn’t have ANY issue refinancing that debt. US treasury is the risk free rate. It’s the basis of an infinite number of financial models as the baseline level of risk people will tolerate. Every single analyst from here to China works on that basis.

This idea that you can’t refinance debt is nonsense. American firms are wildly profitable, and America used to be the safest bet to set up a new firm, or do ground breaking research.

If you wanted to make more money, increase taxes, and you can refinance debt even faster than this. Shifting the yields is … how does that apply to new bonds which would be auctioned??? The face value and rate are set anyway.

mixologist3• 1 year ago

Or maybe investors didn't buy treasuries because they were in on the scam all along. They wanted to stay liquid because the plan was always to crash the markets and spook foreign investors while US investors are informed to wait for the tweet about the 90 day delay and buy cheap stocks.

buss_jan• 1 year ago

Interesting theory. China might have seen through this ploy and that's why they dumped treasuries.

belter2• 1 year ago

Just four hours before the U.S. administration announcement, posts here were already calling the surge in U.S. bond yields a "non-event." ( and being flagged..)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43630672

It was indeed about T-bills. Something Trump probably doesn't even know what it is. There’s no strategy, no objective, just sheer, unfiltered incompetence.

The stock market’s reprieve will be short-lived. In just eight days, this administration erased $5 trillion in market value, insulted its primary trading partner using language deeply offensive in Asian cultures, and made it clear to investors that it has zero credibility.

Futures are already negative, which is exactly what you'd expect. The market is responding. And let’s be honest: the claim about 75 countries eager to negotiate is a pure lie. The EU has publicly stated the U.S. administration was not even returning their calls.

belter2• 1 year ago

"Trump economic advisor says bond market added ‘a little more urgency’ to tariff decision" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/10/china-trump-tariffs-live-upd...

throw0101d• 1 year ago

From the beginning, I’ve believed the executive branch's real goal was to push down the yield on the 10-year Treasury.

The "executive branch" is Trump. Everyone else is just running around making up excuses for whatever his last decision was.

The "goal" is whether Trump feels like (not) having tariffs and whatever value he feels they should be.

There is no "they": it's just Trump (or maybe whomever he last spoke to that could change mind).

tim3339• 1 year ago

That seems to be confirmed by el presidente:

Bessent said the decision had nothing to do with the markets.

“This was driven by the president’s strategy,” he told reporters outside the West Wing. “He and I had a long talk on Sunday, and this was his strategy all along."

Trump later contradicted Bessent.

“I was watching the bond market," he said. “That bond market is very tricky.”

(https://www.yahoo.com/news/week-trump-pushed-global-economy-...)

ruph123• 1 year ago

Can someone ELI5 this?

_DeadFred_• 1 year ago

Trump formulated his ideas on tariffs in the 1980s. He talked about them with Oprah in another ero. He didn't do this in preparation for some realization of the bond situation in 2025.

varjag• 1 year ago

You read too much into it. Trump is manipulating the market for personal enrichment, in the most mundane manner.

throwaway20372• 1 year ago

    > you can't afford a crisis of confidence in your bonds

In the last 75 years (post WW2), has there every been a crisis of confidence for US gov't debt? I cannot think of any instances.

IAmGraydon• 1 year ago

Instead of being seen as a safe haven, U.S. debt itself started to look shaky. Maybe it was the deficit outlook, maybe the global response to tariffs — but whatever it was, yields started climbing. Fast.

Seems pretty simple to me - bond yields moved up sharply because they follow inflation expectations. Bond holders take on inflation risk, so when future inflation is expected to increase, yields go up to compensate. Out of control tariffs equals out of control inflation, which equals rocketing bond yields. The fact that Trump's team didn't realize this would happen is both hilarious and frightening. This is Econ 101 stuff.

udev40962• 1 year ago

Oh boy, HFTs made a fuck ton of money in the last few days. Probably as much as they make in a year even

snarf21• 1 year ago

Maybe, just maybe, this is all about a secret wealth transfer.

anonzzzies• 1 year ago

Yeah, Trump basically told before he announced the pause. I made a lot of money in the past week doing very little but pay close attention to this flaky dude.

mfitton2• 1 year ago

Do you think normal people (think, your average investing American) are trading based on this news? They probably shouldn't be... I would think that by far most of the trading these past few days has been institutions, so, a big transfer from some financial institutions to others?

ein0p• 1 year ago

Art of the deal. 10% seems "reasonable" to everyone now. That was not the case a week ago. Meanwhile a bunch of overleveraged stock market buffoons were taken to the cleaners.

rsynnott7• 1 year ago

10% doesn't seem reasonable to anyone. Note that markets are still drastically down.

dcow4• 1 year ago

I don’t get the outrage. Trump did this with Mexico. He imposed tariffs and then immediately eased them when Mexico started negotiating. It worked. Wouldn’t a rational market understand his behavior by now (not agree with it, but understand it). Especially since his stated goal has been “impose tariffs to spur renegotiation of trade terms”. Why would a rational market actor be acting like Trump isn’t doing what he’s said he’s doing?

amanaplanacanal4• 1 year ago

Sure. Trump is trying to renegotiate the trade deals with Mexico and Canada that he himself negotiated during his last term, by unilaterally imposing massive tariffs. Why are you pretending that this makes any sense?

zombiwoof2• 1 year ago

So much stability

zombiwoof2• 1 year ago

Pretty clear Trump shorted the market, now going pump and dump

mmphosis• 1 year ago

Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes

— Idiocracy [movie]

macspoofing2• 1 year ago

Chaos agent. It's great to go through this every month.

BLKNSLVR3• 1 year ago

Month?

Day at best, hour at worst.

robofanatic• 1 year ago

I almost bought some bluechip stocks yesterday but changed my mind thinking it may dip further. But my luck is such that it would have actually dipped if I had bought. With my luck these days no matter what I choose, I lose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

rectang• 1 year ago

If it was that easy to "catch a falling knife", everyone would do it.

Kwpolska• 1 year ago

“This was his strategy all along,” Bessent said at the White House, where officials, including him, had denied for days that the tariffs would be suspended.

And why should we believe them? If it was the strategy, you could have made the tariff announcement into an acrostic or something.

RevEng2• 1 year ago

Not 24 hours ago he said the tariffs were non negotiable, now he says this was always the plan. There's no reason to believe a word he says.

csense• 1 year ago

Hypothetically, assume for the moment Bessent is telling the truth. Now let's try to pencil in what the administration's reasoning might be. Here's my best guess at how the conversation in the White House went:

Advisor A: So we're all agreed then. 10% tariffs across the board is our strategy, except China, because Xi is a special boy.

Advisor B: If we announce that, everyone will freak out. There will be rage and panic.

Advisor A: That's where the tactics come in. We announce greater tariffs first, according to this super sketchy formula my intern cooked up with ChatGPT.

Advisor C: That's not what we agreed!

Advisor B: How will that stop the rage and panic?

Advisor A: It's tactics not strategy. We walk it back just before it hits. People will be too busy being relieved to be raged and panicked about 10%. We get the policy we want; the people / markets / etc. will only freak out for a few days and then go back to normal.

Trump: I like it. (Opens Resolute desk drawer.) Here's a signed copy of the Art of the Deal.

Advisor A: Thank you sir! I will cherish it for the rest of my days.

Again, the above is my guess as to what happened, under the (perhaps questionable) assumption that Bessent is telling the truth. ("How likely is this assumption?" is a question orthogonal to the point I'm trying to make, and therefore, out-of-scope for this post.)

sixstringninja• 1 year ago

This is a money grab. Someone or a bunch made a lot of money

layer85• 1 year ago

The 10% apparently also apply to Canada and Mexico now, which they didn’t before:

In a strange turn of events, the president seems to have added another 10 percent tariff to Canada and Mexico. Asked earlier if the 10 percent tariff extended to those countries, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said that it did. And a White House official clarified for me just now that that was the case. Previously, Canada and Mexico had been exempted from this round of “reciprocal” tariffs, though they still faced a 25 percent tariff that the president imposed last month on many of their goods.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/08/business/trump-tarif...

matt-p10• 1 year ago

Also china has 125% tarriff but the reason that they couldn't originally give 10% to Vietnam was trans-shipment of Chinese goods.

If it wasn't happening before, it certainly will be now.

What's actually wrong with them.

alpha_squared3• 1 year ago

I'm coming to the conclusion that the tariffs are a distraction. The 10% across the board appears more like a tax hike without calling it one while the focus on China is just the same old trade war from the first term with louder chest-beating.

magicreadu4• 1 year ago

The reason they have reduced all tariffs back down to 10% even for the countries that were obviously transshipping (Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia) is that they need time to negotiate with those countries, to make sure these countries now put similarly high tariffs (100%+) on China, so that transshipping is reduced to nothing

delecti2• 1 year ago

What's actually wrong with them.

Market manipulation. 1. Sell. 2. Threaten tariffs. 3. Buy. 4. Walk back tariffs threats. 5. Repeat.

With the secret step 0: Pay enough of an Indulgence to get in the loop of when those are going to happen, and to stay in their good graces so the DoJ doesn't hit you for insider trading.

munificent• 1 year ago

Trump thinks of himself as a powerful, insightful deal-maker. He pathologically needs to feel like he is doing something and his comfort zone for what kinds of things to do is "stuff that feels like business deals".

He knows very little about government and policy, but tariffs and dollars and percentages feels familiar to him. He's got a lever, and he can't resist yanking on it to show that he's in charge.

Whether yanking on the lever actually benefits the country or him is entirely besides the point. He's a narcissist and narcissists can't let go.

sva_• 1 year ago

Like when an LLM does a tiny coding error that isn't too noticeable though.

neogodless2• 1 year ago

"Oh! Well this is not a mundane detail, Michael!"

CobrastanJorji• 1 year ago

Idiots, all. This feels like the sort of mistake I'd make. As in, me, myself, without a team of people planning and reviewing who could comfortably doublecheck when they thought I was getting something a little wrong in my orders. Which suggests to me that this is being done by one or two guys who do not have such a team. Which is insane.

Sgt_Apone• 1 year ago

Seems they reversed course on that. Or, they don’t know what they’re doing.

It's been a confusing day.
As Verity said, it turns out Canada and Mexico are not getting a new 10 per cent tariff after all.
The White House reversed its earlier announcement in a new statement just now. Here's the bottom line: No new developments for Canada and Mexico today.
That means there are still worldwide 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminum, on some auto parts in North America, and on some goods traded within North America outside the rules of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade (CUSMA).
The bottom line here: Trump is starting an economic war on China, and U.S. allies are all taking some friendly fire. But a large swath of Canadian trade is spared.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/trump-pauses-most-gl...

magicreadu4• 1 year ago

They know what they are doing. The goal is decoupling from China. They raised tariffs on everyone to see which countries stood with US and which stood with China. Once each country has made their allegiance clear, they delay the deadline to give more time for negotiation. They likely want every ally to raise their tariffs on China to be very very high, to avoid any more transshipping from China.

ilamont2• 1 year ago

Or, they don’t know what they’re doing.

Occam's Razor.

parliament322• 1 year ago

This seems to have been clarified to not be the case, as of 30m ago -- no change to Canada/Mexico:

There’s no change to Canada and Mexico tariffs, indicating that their levies aren’t going down to the 10% baseline. Recall that Trump initially threatened a 25% surtax on each of them. That morphed over time to affect non-USMCA compliant goods -- and it’s not crystal-clear exactly what proportion of Canadian and Mexican shipments that then affects. Canadian energy products also got a smaller rate.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/live-blog/2025-04-08/trump-ta...

beloch• 1 year ago

The U.S. ambassador to Canada has since informed the government that this is not the case, and the tariff's currently in place will remain unchanged for now[1].

However, with this administration, who really knows?

Perhaps Trump is staying quiet to avoid aiding Carney in the election. Perhaps he'll announce harsher tariff's on Canada tomorrow. Canada did retaliate and hasn't been hit with retaliation for retaliating, which gives the lie to Trump's statements that countries should refrain from retaliating if they don't want to be treated even worse.

There is not one whit of consistency or logic on display here.

[1]https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-will...

foogazi2• 1 year ago

If the country gets rich from tariffs why stop them?

rvnx3• 1 year ago

This is where I don't follow Trump's logic. Trump and Musk were claiming that the US will push super high tariffs, that it will make the US rich, and hinting that it will maybe even be possible to suppress the income tax.

partiallypro3• 1 year ago

Musk to his credit is pretty anti-tariff, and has touted a 0% tariff environment with Europe. It's Navarro and Lutnick that are the devil's whispering into his ear on this policy.

RevEng2• 1 year ago

Because it's not the country getting rich - it's the government getting rich from its citizens. It's another form of taxation, but one with no plan and crazy fluctuations day to day that affect first and foremost businesses, who will put off investments are start layoffs in order to make themselves more resilient to the chaos, which affects the whole economy. And this long term downturn in the economy doesn't make the country rich, but rather poor.

If what Trump was saying about making the country rich were true, then sure, why would people complain? But it's not true; just a lie told to placate his followers. It's another version of "diamond hands" or "ride the dip" that you hear from people pumping and dumping crypto stocks.

karim79• 1 year ago

Is anyone sure this is not stock manipulation? Honest question.

misantroop4• 1 year ago

This is pure manipulation. It was engineered to just that from the start. Since it's America, no investigation will be done to look into who profited here - possibly billions off regular people who had margin calls. 3rd world country.

stouset• 1 year ago

billions off regular people who had margin calls

Thanks, Robinhood!

lotsofpulp2• 1 year ago

possibly billions off regular people who had margin calls.

Regular people have no business gambling with levered bets on publicly traded equities. Those losses are their own fault, and they should sell gambling treatment.

mort962• 1 year ago

The president told his Truth Social followers that it's a great time to buy stock just a few hours before this announcement: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1143082727259...

It's probably many things, but one part of it is for sure stock manipulation.

etcet• 1 year ago

This is wild.

8:37AM "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT"

12:18PM "I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

zeagle• 1 year ago

My take is that’s probably for plausible deniability. “The prophet told all true believers, how could there have been insider trading.” The volume on the markets picked up twenty minutes before not hours.

__MatrixMan__5• 1 year ago

No. Honest answer.

sigwinch2• 1 year ago

"...I guess they say it was the biggest day in financial history,"

A finance whiz could tell you that it wasn't the biggest day in the market's history, but maybe a cause for extra celebration among a more select few.

y04nn• 1 year ago

Indeed, the 90 days delay leaked in the morning before being denied and at the end of the day there was the official announcement. So some people new before the official announcement and shared the information.

refurb3• 1 year ago

Anything world leaders do impacts the market.

Its stock manipulation all the way down, if you’re inclined to see it that way.

syncsynchalt• 1 year ago

Hanlon's Razor? /shrug

trymas2• 1 year ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/s/TJ1DEjUEk9

PeakKS• 1 year ago

Up and down and up again. The entire US economy is being used as a pump & dump scam.

chasing2• 1 year ago

Yup. The next 3.75 years are going to suck. Thank you, GOP, for completely shirking your responsibility to keep this kind of garbage in check.

jmward01• 1 year ago

Why does the market like this? Tariffs are in place and unpredictability is now the norm. Tomorrow something new crazy will come out and then the next day and the next day. Even if US markets like this right now, the long term damage has been done. Betting on the medium-long term seems questionable at best.

ohgr2• 1 year ago

The market doesn't like this. All the professional investors got out ages ago (check out Berkshire's dumping) and are dumping to bagholders. Large fund holders are hanging on because they still make fees and it keeps their AUM up there and everyone else is dying at the same rate. Foreign investors are pulling bonds out because the currency is at risk. The market is being manipulated daily and there is no involvement from SEC. There is only risk left. Confidence is gone.

It is the textbook definition of a fucking shit show.

cmrdporcupine3• 1 year ago

You're making me feel better about missing the bump today. I got out over a week ago before things went completely bonkers. Was planning on getting back in when I had a sense the volatility had diminished.

Came back from a meeting to find things were halfway back to where I sold and started to feel bummed.

Guess we'll see what tomorrow brings.

TrackerFF• 1 year ago

Dead cat bounce.

colechristensen2• 1 year ago

The market doesn't know anything, the people who are trading are trading on FOMO and sentiment, because valuation is completely unpredictable when the global economy is being dictated by one man.

f33d5173• 1 year ago

The unpredictability was already priced in. Markets were down substantially from january even on april 2nd. The tariffs are also being priced in, since the markets are still down from april 2nd. Nothing trump has done is good, it just isn't as bad as it could have been.

energy1232• 1 year ago

The markets likes this relative to the alternative of even larger tariffs.

paulddraper5• 1 year ago

The market is still down 10% from 45 days ago.

It's no longer down 20%.

EasyMark3• 1 year ago

I think that's why it's called day-trading and not "long term strategic trading"

rsynnott7• 1 year ago

Why does the market like this?

It doesn't; S&P500 is now at like 5400 vs nearly 6200 a couple of months ago. It's just that it is clearly not _as_ bad as it was earlier in the week.

And honestly you'd wonder how much this is being held up by confused retail traders; looking at WSB, say, many of them seem to think that tariffs are back where they were a few weeks ago (they're not; the 10% thing is staying, and of course there's China).

christkv• 1 year ago

It will be very interesting to see what deals are made in the next 90 days. There is a lot of speculation that the US will push to isolate China as part of any deals made.

Who knows.

Vegenoid2• 1 year ago

Shaking the economy like a snowglobe is sure to make businesses conservative and fearful of spending. There is no path to this being a good thing for the United States.

misantroop4• 1 year ago

So much different analysis for something as simple as insider trading. Remember, Trump always said stock market performance was everything. Then this week suddenly, stock market doesn't matter. In retrospect, it's all so obvious. Neither me nor anyone else could expect them to be so bold about it.

jeswin3• 1 year ago

Contrarian opinion.

Irrespective of what you think of Trump, decentralization of production capacity is a good thing — maybe even essential. If this continued for, say, another twenty years, the West and the rest of the world would be completely stripped of all ability to defend themselves. Literally everything from picket fences to rolling stock to tableware is coming from one country.

Swenrekcah2• 1 year ago

This is not a contrarian opinion. This is a problem that was recognized long ago and production capacity for strategically important industries has been in the buildup both in Europe and the US.

Trump's actions will probably boost European, Canadian and Australian industries a bit more now. Investment in the US will be a hard sell for companies that care about the stability and level-headedness of governments where they operate.

jeswin3• 1 year ago

Well, the contrarian opinion is that this (whatever he did) is a good thing - whether decentralisation happens into the US, Europe or wherever. It's one thing to recognise the problem, and another to attempt to change an uncomfortable status quo.

Every other approach attempted to date has been milder, and hasn't worked. But we'll see if he sticks to it.

nemo44x2• 1 year ago

Genius move. Set the trap (massive global tariffs that seem irrational) and wait for target (china) to retaliate. Once the bait is taken, alienate china and take the pressure off everyone else. New reality still departure from previous order but feels better and gives everyone 90 days to figure it out. Meanwhile china is trapped and isolated.

bloqs• 1 year ago

Why not just skip everyone else to start with

nemo44x2• 1 year ago

1) USA looks far weaker when everyone is included initially. Emboldens china. Then it’s flipped once they commit.

2) Still have a smaller tariff in place but it doesn’t feel as shocking.

nottorp• 1 year ago

But can you trust him to keep them at 10% for more than 12 hours?

shmerl• 1 year ago

What a clown. Luddite level of policy making, inspired by "Ron Vara" aka Peter Navarro, who in a Kafkian fashion quoted himself as a backing for his lunatic theories.

yibg3• 1 year ago

With the whiplash of tariffs, upping tariffs, pausing tariffs, I don't know how companies can do any planning.

A lot of earnings are coming out next couple of weeks. Take Apple for example, how would they forecast Q2 numbers? They have 125% tariffs on all imports from China. Maybe it'll go up more as China increases their own. Or maybe it gets paused. I feel for the FP&A team there.

colechristensen2• 1 year ago

I don't know how companies can do any planning.

They can't. They're saying it out loud updating their guidance.

In polite terms, on earnings calls you're going to hear "we don't know what the fuck to predict".

Follow Bloomberg and you'll hear bank CEOs saying the same thing about the markets, they have no idea what to predict or how to price anything. Right now the line is that America looks like an emerging market with unpredictable wild swings based on policy changes. That is going to drive everyone away from the US, industries, customers, and trade partners.

kumarvvr3• 1 year ago

Its possible they will learn to live with the ebb and tide and ride along. What else can you do?

Apple is perhaps already hiring a fleet of planes and ships to transport iPhones from all over the world to the US.

Tepix2• 1 year ago

No, apple only has 125% tariffs on imports from China to the US. They can send them elsewhere (or parts) and send India-made devices to the US instead for example.

meinersbur• 1 year ago

Does someone know how companies handle these short-term changes of tariffs? Like, when your shipment from oversees eventually arrives, a 50% tariff is due that makes your entire accounting unprofitable, e.g. a contract with another party to sell it to might already been signed. Do the companies usually ensure against these kind of things?

tossandthrow• 1 year ago

I think this is risk og doing business.

I can, as shown, also go the other way, where tarrifs are removed under shipments.

Regardless, the core is exactly that people don't send things overseas in this environment.

thund• 1 year ago

Before announcing it he suggested to buy stocks, ie insider trading.

etchalon• 1 year ago

The dumbest possible timeline.

arunabha• 1 year ago

I am beginning to wonder if there is an actual plan behind these moves beyond creating uncertainty in trading partner's minds.

The stated goal of the administration is to 'reindustrialize' the US by manufacturing more of the goods consumed within the US itself. To get to that goal, tariff barriers are just one part of the story. For tariffs to be effective towards getting to the strategic goal, they need to be coupled with sound industrial policy and a long term execution framework. The three legs of the stool, so to say.

So far, there has been no mention of the other two legs. There is currently no serious bill proposed that aims to apply the required industrial policy and all of these tariffs being imposed under executive orders mean that instability in tariff rates and application is pretty much guaranteed. The very opposite of the stable, long term approach that is needed.

Without the other parts, there is a very high chance that the US will bear the brunt of the short term damage, but with none of the long term benefits.

saulpw4• 1 year ago

I'm sorry, but only in April of 2025 you are wondering if there is an actual plan? Were you paying any attention at all from 2016-2020?

dmazin• 1 year ago

I mean, Peter Navarro's tariff plan is a plan. It's just an absurdly fringe/incompetent plan.

mizzao2• 1 year ago

How about facilitating a monster load of insider trading?

chneu2• 1 year ago

At this point I don't see how anyone can look at what they're doing and not smell insider trader/pump and dump.

It's super obvious.

kumarvvr3• 1 year ago

It looks like the administration is filled with people more interested in making a buck for themselves, rather than do what is best for the country.

Everyone knows that getting another trump may not be possible for at-least another 10 or so years (I don't mean the dems will win, just that republicans may put forth a saner version of trump just to save the party)

chneu2• 1 year ago

That's the Hallmark of a fascist leader.

I hate to bring up Hitler but that's how he gained much of his power. He was a "useful idiot". The people that helped him were looking out for themselves. They thought they could use Hitler to grab power/wealth.

acdha4• 1 year ago

There isn’t a serious plan to bring manufacturing back. You can debate whether there is a plan for high-pressure negotiations, insider trading or kickbacks (e.g. Nvidia’s successful deployment of a million dollar dinner at Mar-a-Lago), etc. but you can tell that it’s not a good-faith attempt to invest in American industry because that would start with the two things you mentioned: you’d see the investment in those industries now and a commitment to raising taxes on foreign competition in 2030 or so when people have had time to actually be able to meet demand.

What we’re seeing now makes as much sense as a middle-aged laptop jockey deciding that they want to be in better shape – and then quitting their job to run in the Badwater Ultramarathon the next week.

ipaddr• 1 year ago

The issue is timing. He needed to paydown debt before imposing tariffs which will lower bond demand raising interest rates. You can't inshore industries from everyone and rely foreign debt to prop up the dollar.

wonderwonder3• 1 year ago

I voted for Trump and I would again in a heartbeat if faced with the same options but this has been dumb. Whole of the Right is running around screaming the "Art of the deal" when literally nothing has been accomplished. Market is still down, bond rates are still high. We trashed relationships with other countries and not a single trade deal has been signed. And he clearly backed down. We still have no idea what the end goal is. Its just dumb. We are objectively worse off than we were a week ago.

He is still delivering for me on the reasons I voted for him but this chapter has been a debacle. Fun part is with Trump as president every week is a chapter, for most presidents a chapter is 2 years. So excited to see what's next.

If he delivers on China and effectively resets the world financial and trade picture in our favor then well done but so far not impressed.

Whole world celebrating the guy who started the fire putting it out.

"Lisan Al Gaib" JFC

TheAlchemist• 1 year ago

What's quite impressive, is that people are so relieved now. The base scenario must have been really bad.

As it is, we get:

- 10% of tarrifs on everybody, 25% on several big sectors, 125% on China. Which is absolutely massive

- any confidence in the sanity of the government absolutely destroyed - 90 days ? He can change his mind tomorrow, or in 90 days. Entirely possible that he forgets this whole thing during the 90 days. How is the tough negotiation with Russia going btw ?

- China that showed it's not afraid of Trump. Trump fired all the bullets he had on China, he can increase the tarrifs to 1000%, it doesn't change a thing. Other than convincing other countries to openly joint US trade war on China, or use of military force, he cannot do anything more I believe.

China on the other hand can wreck havock in many, many different ways. Just look at the bond markets yesterday - nobody knows if it was China or not. But everybody knows China could make it much worse. Same goes for US businesses. Safety inspection in Tesla or Apple suppliers factory ? Why not.

EasyMark3• 1 year ago

I don't mind the China tariffs. They have been abusing US interests for years and scoffed at promises they made when they entered into WTO and any IP is fair game for their corporate spies, and US companies would be laughed at to try and litigate any of it inside their borders. Something does need to happen with China, but the vast majority of Trump's tariffs were indeed as if he is stupid as a sack of rocks.

nicholas1314• 1 year ago

Does Trump seem to be using the country's credit to make money?

mikewarot• 1 year ago

The "Global Reserve Currency" privilege of the US dollar has been blown into bits, it's all a matter of time until our standards of living here in the US get cut by 75%.

humanlity2• 1 year ago

In China, we called this battle as hypoglycemia (China) versus hypertension (USA), but, what do all the grand narratives have to do with me, I just want to live a good life.

fxxk xi, fxxk trump

humanlity2• 1 year ago

In China, we called this battle as hypoglycemia (China) versus hypertension (USA), but, what do all the grand narratives have to do with me, I just want to live a good life.

fxxk Xi, fxxk Trump,

trymas2• 1 year ago

Happy ~liberation~ market manipulation day!

Havoc2• 1 year ago

There is zero chance that dude can sit on his hands for 90 days.

He'll have some insane idea to replace it by end of week

Havoc2• 1 year ago

lol. More China tariffs. Didn’t even make it 24 hours

SuperSandro2000• 1 year ago

the chaos goes on

Nemrod67• 1 year ago

90% of stocks are owned by 10% of the population... Are you guys crying for the rich?

fifilura3• 1 year ago

One thing that makes me curious.

Pennsylvania unemployment rate is 3,4%.

In the EU you commonly see unemployment rates around 10% and that is even after rather massive reeducation programs.

Why is this seen as such a big problem that these 3,4% pretty much get to decide the entire US policy?

In the EU that would be a great number and mostly normal considering that people that switch jobs or just finished studying or are just generally unemployable is counted towards that numer.

https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dli/newsroom/pennsylvania-s-unem...

saturn8601• 1 year ago

You sure its just the 3.4%? 5% is considered 'full employment' so 3.4 should be some of the best times in history.

How many people are employed but are in a job that barely provides enough money to survive? How many people are working 2 or even 3 jobs just to barely survive? Those people would be counted as 'employed'. You should look at these other groups of people before making judgement.

fifilura3• 1 year ago

I don't make judgement. I just read the link, and the source seemed reputable.

But all I hear is "we want factory work back to Pennsylvania".

If the jobs pay too low, why would you want even more low paying jobs back to USA, sewing t-shirts, making sneakers, working in a factory?

And - specifically - why do the people that want that get so much influence?

alain94040• 1 year ago

There are several different definitions of unemployment rates: U-3, U-6, etc. Are you sure you are comparing using the same definition? See for instance https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080415/true-...

amai• 1 year ago

And tariffs for Russia are still 0% ?

enaaem2• 1 year ago

Same guy recommending what the US should do: https://bsky.app/profile/dieworkwear.bsky.social/post/3lmb6y...

In short he argues that there is no point in making $50 chinos. Similarly to Italy, the US should focus on regional branding and high-end artisanal products.

I would argue that ship has sailed under Trump. The US was in a prime position to brand itself via soft power and the media, and now it's actively being boycotted.

mik09• 1 year ago

'coming again to save the motherfucking day yeah!'

Trump temporarily drops tariffs to 10% for most countries

Related Stories