The New Coffee Room

@Horace said in Make America Globalist Again:

I think the main pro-isolationism messaging boils down to empathy for people who would have died of a fentanyl overdose, but were saved by a factory job. As a country, we're really, really prioritizing that story. It's a strange thing to put at the top of the economic priority list.

Agreed. I don't think it was the factory job by itself. It was the factory job along with the cultural norm of people able to get married and have a regular life if you were willing to buckle down and do an honest day's work.

The culture part of the equation is completely ignored.

The Pakistan line was drawn through Punjab. Punjab was the location of the last independent Indian empire that fell to the British.

About 12-20 million people were displaced and some estimate up to 2 million deaths from resulting violence and deprivation.

The line was so ineptly drawn that the founding temple of the Sikh faith ended up in Pakistan. (Sikhism comes from Punjab).

The apocryphal story is that Lord Mountbatten couldn't take the Indian summer heat and just drew a line through villages and cities as fast as he could.

Doubly frustrating considering that the world economy was headed in the right direction. World stock markets were trending up, and the US usually beats them.

So, we're down when we should have been up.

Even more frustrating - it'll take months for this to really percolate through to "Main Street", at which point it might take even more months to unwind it.

It’s not even particularly desirable. An iPhone sells for $1000, costs about $400 to make and about $100 of that value is driven by China.

Would we rather have Huawei in America with $100 going to American manufacturing (just assume that’s possible) - or the current state of an American company (Apple) with $100 going to China?

The way Trump talks, he’d take the former.

Alright - so step 1, stock market down. Step 2 - destroy a large portion of all other major countries. Step 3 - profit.

On to step 2, I guess?

Can they "ask"? The government admits they made a mistake.

@Jolly said in Really trying not to dunk:

Trump is Trump.

He is a chaos agent that brings change.

I knew that when I voted for him.

Interesting. Doesn't that make you some sort of ultra-progressive. We don't just want to burn this thing down and change - we want completely unpredictable random change! Anything is better than this hellhole.

You've got a great eye for good shots. Looks like great trip!

This trailer has me sold:

Can’t picture it. Hell I can’t even picture him talking to Bush or Bill.

One of the big reasons for moving from tariffs to income tax early last century was because it’s such an obvious corruption surface. I’ve always seen it as the conservatives’ job to push for lessons from history. Now we just have two progressive parties.

Can we start a go fund me or something for the lamestream media?

Do Spanish origin white people get to check the Hispanic box?

Xi can say that an external aggressor is forcing the pain on them. I can see them getting down to rationing electricity.

We’ll sharpen the pitch forks if a Big Mac goes up a few bucks.

I agree China will feel more pain, the question is about pain tolerance.

Gross

@Horace said in Trumpenomics:

I think the 10% universal tariff sticks until jobs numbers or inflation numbers push him off of it. The negotiations are to reduce >10% to 10%. That's my prediction anyway.

Optimistic take. In the sense that anyone will be forced to admit that lower growth is attributable to tariffs.

Tariffs are also a huge compliance burden and corruption surface. I haven't seen any clarity on how these things are going to be levied. Will it be on Bill-of-materials? (e.g., what the thing being imported is worth) - which is easier. Or is it based on value-add (what did the last country add vs. all the countries before it?) - which is more accurate.

It becomes important - e.g., China contributes about 25% of the value in an iphone, but the trade deficit takes into account the full BOM (chips sourced from Japan, Taiwan, etc.).

You don't have to do any of this work before you introduce tariffs - and then you have to do it by every product in the economy. And then we rail against regulations.

@LuFins-Dad said in Trumpenomics:

So here’s the question you have to ask. Is Bessent (a Yale grad that went on to run Soros’ London office and ultimately became a partner before starting his own highly successful firm focused on global trading and macroeconomics) an absolute idiot and lucked his way into the wealth and positions he was in? Or is there something more at play?

I thought those guys were the guys we were specifically not listening to with this policy.

I don't know if Bessent is true believer, but you don't get a job in this admin without being a lickspittle. And there's a lot of spittle to lick here.

Conspicuously missing here is any leadership by the President, aside from a tweet or two.

@Horace said in Trumpenomics:

I know he's talked about how much he loves tariffs his whole life, but Trump 1.0 still didn't attempt anything like this.

I think it's becoming pretty clear that1.0 was heavily restrained.

The economy is complicated and we might be on the cusp of learning something we did not know before. That's all to say - nothing is certain.

But what we do know is there is no way for many businesses to sell what they're selling today without a massive price increase. A price increase which may kill their demand.

I also can't imagine any business leader wanting to seriously invest against an executive order. I also think no large company wants to be the first to complain - so these things may hang around until the pain is quite severe.

I guess - I'm responding to @LuFins-Dad, I don't see how this is similar to the covid panic. We have a pretty clear line of sight to the first order effects. I also don't think the stock market aspect is the really important one - it's just where the impact shows up first.

@Renauda That makes sense. The theory would be, since there’s less wild chicken pox virus circulating around (since the advent of the vaccine), people get fewer exposures to the virus throughout their life (most of which wouldn’t end up in shingles, but would rather act as a “re-up” of immunity)

Similar to how we all became very susceptible to regular respiratory viruses (cold, flu) after completely avoiding them for a couple of years during COVID.