This is what the government spending cuts and tariffs are about. If there's a better way to fix the debt issue other than cutting spending and trying to make up trade deficits, they'd probably like to hear some ideas. These moves suggest they don't have any better ones.
In mid-October last year, the widely respected financial journal, The Economist, ran with this headline and cover story: "The American Economy: The Envy of the World." And the sub-head was: "The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust." Not bad for the country that Trump has would have the brain-dead believe is in an "economic emergency" and the trading partner punching bag of the world. If so many countries are taking advantage of us, it would seem they're doing a pretty bad job of it!
The last time we tried tariffs this insane (Trump's are actually worse than Smoot-Hawley), they helped usher in the Great Depression. So there's your "proof of concept" and the reason high tariffs have been discredited by economists left, right and center ever since. It also goes without saying that triggering a recession and stagflation with this stupidity will cut growth and revenue, thereby driving up deficits even higher. And spare me the BS that Trump, the self-styled King of Debt, has ANY interest in solving the debt problem. In his first term, his unpaid for tax breaks to the richest blew up the national debt by more than all 44 previous presidents COMBINED.
As for spending cuts: the Pentagon budget is nearly $850 billion dollars and for decades has been spending more each year than the next 8-10 largest militaries in the world COMBINED. So how is it that we're always falling behind our adversaries? Why are so many weapons systems wildly overbudget, hugely behind schedule and never work as advertised? Seems like a place that's rife with waste, fraud and abuse. Musk, himself, has excoriated "idiots who are still building the F-35" and has pleaded, "...in the name of all this is holy, let us stop the worst military value for the money in history, which is the F-35 program." Did DOGE stop it? Nope. Where are the mass DOGE firings at the Pentagon? Why hasn't DOGE taking over the Pentagon computers? Why hasn't DOGE limited Pentagon credit cards to $1? Instead, DOGE is devastating health care and services for the veterans who risked their bodies and lives in defense of this country. Nice! DOGE isn't looking for waste, fraud and abuse--it is indiscriminately taking a chainsaw to the government to free up more money for tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
Big BS about veterans, I am DV and not lost a single cents, in fact my health care is far to none. Stop your big BS about veterans please
This is what the government spending cuts and tariffs are about. If there's a better way to fix the debt issue other than cutting spending and trying to make up trade deficits, they'd probably like to hear some ideas. These moves suggest they don't have any better ones.
In mid-October last year, the widely respected financial journal, The Economist, ran with this headline and cover story: "The American Economy: The Envy of the World." And the sub-head was: "The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust." Not bad for the country that Trump has would have the brain-dead believe is in an "economic emergency" and the trading partner punching bag of the world. If so many countries are taking advantage of us, it would seem they're doing a pretty bad job of it!
The last time we tried tariffs this insane (Trump's are actually worse than Smoot-Hawley), they helped usher in the Great Depression. So there's your "proof of concept" and the reason high tariffs have been discredited by economists left, right and center ever since. It also goes without saying that triggering a recession and stagflation with this stupidity will cut growth and revenue, thereby driving up deficits even higher. And spare me the BS that Trump, the self-styled King of Debt, has ANY interest in solving the debt problem. In his first term, his unpaid for tax breaks to the richest blew up the national debt by more than all 44 previous presidents COMBINED.
As for spending cuts: the Pentagon budget is nearly $850 billion dollars and for decades has been spending more each year than the next 8-10 largest militaries in the world COMBINED. So how is it that we're always falling behind our adversaries? Why are so many weapons systems wildly overbudget, hugely behind schedule and never work as advertised? Seems like a place that's rife with waste, fraud and abuse. Musk, himself, has excoriated "idiots who are still building the F-35" and has pleaded, "...in the name of all this is holy, let us stop the worst military value for the money in history, which is the F-35 program." Did DOGE stop it? Nope. Where are the mass DOGE firings at the Pentagon? Why hasn't DOGE taking over the Pentagon computers? Why hasn't DOGE limited Pentagon credit cards to $1? Instead, DOGE is devastating health care and services for the veterans who risked their bodies and lives in defense of this country. Nice! DOGE isn't looking for waste, fraud and abuse--it is indiscriminately taking a chainsaw to the government to free up more money for tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
Big BS about veterans, I am DV and not lost a single cents, in fact my health care is far to none. Stop your big BS about veterans please
So, you're saying that right-wing media aren't reporting the massive cuts and layoffs DOGE is making at the VA? Do you have any clue what is going on around you? That last question was rhetorical, I know you don't.
I still can’t believe people voted for this moron. It’s sad to see the pathetic joke this once great country has become.
So what do you want to do w the $36T debt? This guy has the balls to do something about it. We been ripped off for a long time. Americans are just buying & consuming cheap imports. Just look at your closets, your house, probably 99% are all imported by greedy importers. TEMU anyone?? Probably 90% are not utilized.
How is that Americans being ripped off? Nobody held a gun to your collective heads and said buy our cheap stuff or else. If anything it’s been Americans literally holding guns to the heads of others during your military adventures that have taken place practically non stop since WW2 ended.
Day 2 of our economic collapse is set to begin here in liberated America. Sure hope no one was thinking of a happy retirement. Hopefully freedom fries from the dumpster in the alley will taste nice. And for a look at ludicrous math by a two year old...
I still can’t believe people voted for this moron. It’s sad to see the pathetic joke this once great country has become.
So what do you want to do w the $36T debt? This guy has the balls to do something about it. We been ripped off for a long time. Americans are just buying & consuming cheap imports. Just look at your closets, your house, probably 99% are all imported by greedy importers. TEMU anyone?? Probably 90% are not utilized.
Most of the current U.S. debt was created by the Republican party.
In Bill Clinton's final term the U.S. was running a tax surplus and the $$ was being used to pay down the debt (as part of a bipartisan agreement). When George W. Bush took office, his administration declared that the surplus represented overtaxation, VP Cheney infamously declared that deficits "don't matter" and they started up deficit spending again. The most significant parts of that deficit spending were the Bush Tax Cuts and the invasion/occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
When Barack Obama took office after Bush, the vast majority of the debt was driven by those tax cuts and the trillions in costs from the Afghanistan/Iraq wars. Republicans returned to claiming the deficit mattered with a Democrat in the White House and used the last six years of Obama's presidency to enforce austerity measures, like insisting that every new dollar of spending required a dollar in cuts.
When Trump took office for his first term, Republicans again abandoned concerns about the deficit and passed a $2 trillion stimulus in the form of a tax cut. For comparison, they limited the stimulus for the Great Recession in Obama's 1st term to less than $900 billion. Now for Trump's 2nd term they want to make the $2 trillion tax cut permanent and add trillions more in new tax cuts. They believed that allowing DOGE to run wild firing federal workers and eliminating agencies would provide cover for the massive amount of new debt they were going to add through the tax cuts but DOGE has already been exposed as a scam that adds to the debt rather than cutting it. For example, the DOGE firings at the IRS are projected to cost the United States $500 billion in revenue. That's because every IRS agent that is employed brings in multiple times more revenue than their own salary.
A tariff is a sales tax levied on goods as they enter the country. The buyer pays the tax, not the seller. On finished products, that tax will be passed on directly to the consumer. On parts, that tax will be incorporated into the price and passed on to the consumer. The talking point that Apple or “China” or anyone on the supply side will pay the tax for any length of time is ridiculous. Also remember that sales taxes are regressive. The more of your income that goes directly to buying things, the greater percentage of your income goes directly to paying the tax.
This is going to be a disaster.
Actually it depends on the seller whether or not they will absorb the cost.
Ford motor Compsny announced today that they will be selling their vehicles under invoice from today through early June. They have enough inventory to help offset the loss somewhat, but it’s an example of how sellers get creative in a temporary reset of trade relations.
It may posdible be tough in some markets for the short term, but the long term gain is worth shooting for.
As far as Apple, will be interesting to see if they raise prices at all - or to learn of any special treatment - regardless of the “no exemptions” statement someone here attributed to him.
I see a lot of knee-jerk reactions here and proclamations of doom with very little look at the reasons why it potential upside.
Let’s let the president cook and do his thing. It’s what he was elected to do. Apple is in communication and seems to be supportive of him. So let’s give it a bit and see how it shakes out before rushing to judgement one way or the other.
If anything, Apple could definitely absorb the cost since their pricing on anything upgraded I has been ridiculous for years now.
Hopefully this could ignite a return to pricing normally when all is said and done.
The tariffs are too large and too widespread for any company to simply eat the cost for long, and selling off pre-tariff inventory before raising prices is not eating the costs anyway.
Besides, using Ford as an example, isn’t a key point of tariffs supposed to be that artificially raised import prices gives domestic makers more room to competitively raise their own prices to become more profitable? So why are we even talking about Ford having to “creatively” eat costs to delay price increases?
Oh, right. Because in much of the manufacturing industry, there are no foreign and domestic manufacturers anymore. Ford makes parts and entire cars on either or both sides of the border. Honda has a huge plant in Ohio and Volkswagen has one in Tennessee, and just like Ford, GM and Chrysler, their cars are made of foreign and domestic parts, some of which will be taxed multiple times as they go back and forth across the border.
So using tariffs as a cudgel turns out to be profoundly stupid. Plus, as we’ve already seen this morning, other countries will raise their own tariffs in response, rather than capitulate and apologize for “taking advantage” of the US.
Nobody wins a tariff war, and certainly not one of this breadth and scope. We will all be paying for this for years to come.
If it weren’t for the real pain this will cause so many people, it would be hilarious right now, watching so-called conservative republicans twisting themselves into cognitively dissonant knots as they cheer on one of the largest tax increases in US history.
One huge thing that the “onesiderism” mindset of the current boss man and his minions fail to recognize is the fact that trading with global partners can have very significant mutual benefits for everyone involved. A lot of these benefits are not measured by keeping score based on trade surpluses and deficits. Trade between countries helps build mutual respect and trust. When companies like Apple create massive dependencies on foreign suppliers and manufacturers it creates a bond with both sides having skin in the game. If Apple didn’t trust that its overseas suppliers could deliver they wouldn’t be investing in those countries. Apple needs them and they need Apple.
On a social and economic level, non-exploitive trade between countries helps raise the standard of living on both sides. Did China have a sizable middle class of citizens who could afford luxury goods from around the world because they had disposable income before they started trading with the west? I don’t think so. Apple would not have a Chinese customer base if the US and other western countries hadn’t started trading openly with China. Yeah, there are certainly some disparities involved, but the net benefits of free trade throughout are still huge.
Mutual benefits can only exist where there is no widespread exploitation by either side. The presence of exploitation should not be measured based solely on monetary trade imbalances. That would be totally ignorant. This is especially true when the consumer base on one side is far different than the consumer base on the other. The nature and type of advantages that each side has can be very different. Apple has an advantage in manufacturing in Asia partly due to having the suppliers closer, lower labor costs, and lower manufacturing costs. The bigger advantage currently is it gives them the massive agility and scale that is simply not available domestically. They can ramp up 25,000 new workers and the required new and updated manufacturing lines in weeks or a couple of months. Doing the same thing domestically could take very many months or even years, especially when the skilled labor required in modern manufacturing processes is not widely or readily available. On the other side, they get much needed jobs to help transition them out of a low growth economy and are now on the path to having a larger middle class who are more likely to purchase goods that are marketed by western companies, like Apple.
To basically claim that any trading partner that has a monetary imbalance of trade in their favor is engaged in exploitive practices against the US is ridiculous. The bottom line is that the current clown circus trying to run (or ruin) our economy is ridiculously narrow minded with narrow views of trade and mutual benefits that border on the microscopic. We are currently witnessing devolution happening in real time.
Nobody wins a tariff war, and certainly not one of this breadth and scope. We will all be paying for this for years to come.
The thing that is so stupid about the tariffs is that Trump already tried this strategy in his 1st term and it was a complete failure. American farmers had to get $28 billion in taxpayer funded bailouts to prevent the farming industry in the U.S. from collapsing. So instead of creating a better market for farmers, the tariffs just created unnecessary debt for Americans that pay taxes.
The bottom line is that the current clown circus trying to run (or ruin) our economy is ridiculously narrow minded with narrow views of trade and mutual benefits that border on the microscopic. We are currently witnessing devolution happening in real time.
They're just saboteurs. That's the only sensible explanation for what's going on.
This is what the government spending cuts and tariffs are about. If there's a better way to fix the debt issue other than cutting spending and trying to make up trade deficits, they'd probably like to hear some ideas. These moves suggest they don't have any better ones.
In mid-October last year, the widely respected financial journal, The Economist, ran with this headline and cover story: "The American Economy: The Envy of the World." And the sub-head was: "The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust." Not bad for the country that Trump has would have the brain-dead believe is in an "economic emergency" and the trading partner punching bag of the world. If so many countries are taking advantage of us, it would seem they're doing a pretty bad job of it!
The last time we tried tariffs this insane (Trump's are actually worse than Smoot-Hawley), they helped usher in the Great Depression. So there's your "proof of concept" and the reason high tariffs have been discredited by economists left, right and center ever since. It also goes without saying that triggering a recession and stagflation with this stupidity will cut growth and revenue, thereby driving up deficits even higher. And spare me the BS that Trump, the self-styled King of Debt, has ANY interest in solving the debt problem. In his first term, his unpaid for tax breaks to the richest blew up the national debt by more than all 44 previous presidents COMBINED.
As for spending cuts: the Pentagon budget is nearly $850 billion dollars and for decades has been spending more each year than the next 8-10 largest militaries in the world COMBINED. So how is it that we're always falling behind our adversaries? Why are so many weapons systems wildly overbudget, hugely behind schedule and never work as advertised? Seems like a place that's rife with waste, fraud and abuse. Musk, himself, has excoriated "idiots who are still building the F-35" and has pleaded, "...in the name of all this is holy, let us stop the worst military value for the money in history, which is the F-35 program." Did DOGE stop it? Nope. Where are the mass DOGE firings at the Pentagon? Why hasn't DOGE taking over the Pentagon computers? Why hasn't DOGE limited Pentagon credit cards to $1? Instead, DOGE is devastating health care and services for the veterans who risked their bodies and lives in defense of this country. Nice! DOGE isn't looking for waste, fraud and abuse--it is indiscriminately taking a chainsaw to the government to free up more money for tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
Big BS about veterans, I am DV and not lost a single cents, in fact my health care is far to none. Stop your big BS about veterans please
Give it time. The VA Secretary is planning to cut 80,000 jobs, starting in June. If I were you, I’d bump any planned appointments up ahead of that, because that’s going to affect you. I’m grateful for your service, but it is literally not in your best interest for you to believe that this president cares one whit about it.
it will be less socially acceptable in China to buy U.S. products.
You raise a good point that has not been fully appreciated yet. Focus so far has been on how the tariffs will impact Apple's #1 market, the USA. But Apple's #2 market is China, where it will likely face economic retaliation of some kind by the Chinese government (despite a lot of Apple production being still based in China) in addition to what I'm sure will be anti-American sentiment on the part of Chinese consumers. Trump has quickly transformed the USA into a global supervillain (mirroring himself in that regard), and I'm both expecting and understanding of what will likely be a tsunami of anti-American sentiment everywhere. We are the bad guys now.
Ford motor Compsny announced today that they will be selling their vehicles under invoice from today through early June. They have enough inventory to help offset the loss somewhat, but it’s an example of how sellers get creative in a temporary reset of trade relations.
I love how the cult members will just make things up. Ford did not announce that they were selling their cars under invoice. They said they would sell their cars at the dealer invoice price. So, from Ford's perspective they aren't taking any loss whatsoever. The dealer invoice cost includes Ford's cut as well as the incentives that the dealer gets. Anything above dealer invoice cost goes to the dealer, not Ford. They also didn't say that the dealer invoice cost would stay where it is. Lastly, Ford doesn't sell cars directly and it cannot set the pricing for its dealers.That would be illegal. So Ford has effectively done nothing but try to generate some good PR. Gullible people, like yourself, have bought it.
FWIW, getting deal invoice pricing for a car has always been really easy. Rather than buy a car that is sitting on the lot you ask them to order one for you. I have never had a dealer not give me invoice when I do that. They get their cut for submitting the order and they have virtually no costs related to the sale. The cars on the lot they have to insure, maintain and employee sales people to sell. So those will typically include markup behind the invoice.
And, of course, those “reciprocal” trump tariff taxes are nothing of the kind but simply, and idiotically, calculated by simply looking at the trade in goods (not the totality of trade in goods and services) and NOT the actual tariffs of each country. In part that’s how uninhabited islands got slammed with “reciprocal tariffs”!! and for others tariffs that are far higher than the tariffs they have set, at least until now…
The one slight positive is this disaster was created by the scribble of a sharpie in a few seconds and can be deleted just as fast. As today’s jobs report showed, the economy is strong if not strangled by incompetence.
Nobody wins a tariff war, and certainly not one of this breadth and scope. We will all be paying for this for years to come.
The thing that is so stupid about the tariffs is that Trump already tried this strategy in his 1st term and it was a complete failure. American farmers had to get $28 billion in taxpayer funded bailouts to prevent the farming industry in the U.S. from collapsing. So instead of creating a better market for farmers, the tariffs just created unnecessary debt for Americans that pay taxes.
Keep in mind that farming requires seasonal lead time to make decisions about crops and livestock. This administration has already impulsively cancelled agricultural purchases for USAID and now for domestic food banks. They've also deported or threatened migrant workers who would normally do the planting and picking. Now, as China and others countries impose retaliatory tariffs on US agricultural products, farmers have already made seed purchases, planted some and are either holding or obligated to buy other crop seed. Similarly, breeding of livestock is already well under way. Do they go ahead and grow the stuff planned for export, or do they cull herds, plow under crops and let seed rot as they try to cut their losses?
For domestic consumers, this may mean some low prices on a few things they don't want and higher prices on things they do, as farmers seek to offset their huge losses on exports, or simply go out of business and don't grow anything for anyone. Similar chaos will impact manufacturing industries like at Apple, but it'll be immediate and hugely damaging in the Agricultural sector. Again, there's no pleasure in seeing this pain, but the people hurt are the same ones in red-state "flyover country" who were sold a bill of goods by a con that would make Bernie Madoff blush. Watch this summer for the news stories about farmers going bankrupt. Willie Nelson will show up to help, but there's only so much he can do. Also watch this summer for the stories about famine all over the globe as the disruptions affect the poorest people everywhere. People are going to die because of one man's egotistical bluster.
This is what the government spending cuts and tariffs are about. If there's a better way to fix the debt issue other than cutting spending and trying to make up trade deficits, they'd probably like to hear some ideas. These moves suggest they don't have any better ones.
In mid-October last year, the widely respected financial journal, The Economist, ran with this headline and cover story: "The American Economy: The Envy of the World." And the sub-head was: "The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust." Not bad for the country that Trump has would have the brain-dead believe is in an "economic emergency" and the trading partner punching bag of the world. If so many countries are taking advantage of us, it would seem they're doing a pretty bad job of it!
The last time we tried tariffs this insane (Trump's are actually worse than Smoot-Hawley), they helped usher in the Great Depression. So there's your "proof of concept" and the reason high tariffs have been discredited by economists left, right and center ever since. It also goes without saying that triggering a recession and stagflation with this stupidity will cut growth and revenue, thereby driving up deficits even higher. And spare me the BS that Trump, the self-styled King of Debt, has ANY interest in solving the debt problem. In his first term, his unpaid for tax breaks to the richest blew up the national debt by more than all 44 previous presidents COMBINED.
As for spending cuts: the Pentagon budget is nearly $850 billion dollars and for decades has been spending more each year than the next 8-10 largest militaries in the world COMBINED. So how is it that we're always falling behind our adversaries? Why are so many weapons systems wildly overbudget, hugely behind schedule and never work as advertised? Seems like a place that's rife with waste, fraud and abuse. Musk, himself, has excoriated "idiots who are still building the F-35" and has pleaded, "...in the name of all this is holy, let us stop the worst military value for the money in history, which is the F-35 program." Did DOGE stop it? Nope. Where are the mass DOGE firings at the Pentagon? Why hasn't DOGE taking over the Pentagon computers? Why hasn't DOGE limited Pentagon credit cards to $1? Instead, DOGE is devastating health care and services for the veterans who risked their bodies and lives in defense of this country. Nice! DOGE isn't looking for waste, fraud and abuse--it is indiscriminately taking a chainsaw to the government to free up more money for tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
Big BS about veterans, I am DV and not lost a single cents, in fact my health care is far to none. Stop your big BS about veterans please
So, you're saying that right-wing media aren't reporting the massive cuts and layoffs DOGE is making at the VA? Do you have any clue what is going on around you? That last question was rhetorical, I know you don't.
it’s called efficiency. Cutting waste to maximize organizational health. That’s a good thing.
Any business knows this.
Bloat is bad. Lean, mean machine is good.
We prune trees and bushes to redirect the flow from dead, useless branches to healthy, productive ones. That’s what going on here at organizations in the government. There is literally only good to come of it. Americans are shocked to see where our tax dollars have been wasted. It’s finally being addressed.
Veterans now will have a better shot of money actually going to their care instead of dead end pointless endeavors.
This is what the government spending cuts and tariffs are about. If there's a better way to fix the debt issue other than cutting spending and trying to make up trade deficits, they'd probably like to hear some ideas. These moves suggest they don't have any better ones.
In mid-October last year, the widely respected financial journal, The Economist, ran with this headline and cover story: "The American Economy: The Envy of the World." And the sub-head was: "The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust." Not bad for the country that Trump has would have the brain-dead believe is in an "economic emergency" and the trading partner punching bag of the world. If so many countries are taking advantage of us, it would seem they're doing a pretty bad job of it!
The last time we tried tariffs this insane (Trump's are actually worse than Smoot-Hawley), they helped usher in the Great Depression. So there's your "proof of concept" and the reason high tariffs have been discredited by economists left, right and center ever since. It also goes without saying that triggering a recession and stagflation with this stupidity will cut growth and revenue, thereby driving up deficits even higher. And spare me the BS that Trump, the self-styled King of Debt, has ANY interest in solving the debt problem. In his first term, his unpaid for tax breaks to the richest blew up the national debt by more than all 44 previous presidents COMBINED.
As for spending cuts: the Pentagon budget is nearly $850 billion dollars and for decades has been spending more each year than the next 8-10 largest militaries in the world COMBINED. So how is it that we're always falling behind our adversaries? Why are so many weapons systems wildly overbudget, hugely behind schedule and never work as advertised? Seems like a place that's rife with waste, fraud and abuse. Musk, himself, has excoriated "idiots who are still building the F-35" and has pleaded, "...in the name of all this is holy, let us stop the worst military value for the money in history, which is the F-35 program." Did DOGE stop it? Nope. Where are the mass DOGE firings at the Pentagon? Why hasn't DOGE taking over the Pentagon computers? Why hasn't DOGE limited Pentagon credit cards to $1? Instead, DOGE is devastating health care and services for the veterans who risked their bodies and lives in defense of this country. Nice! DOGE isn't looking for waste, fraud and abuse--it is indiscriminately taking a chainsaw to the government to free up more money for tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
Big BS about veterans, I am DV and not lost a single cents, in fact my health care is far to none. Stop your big BS about veterans please
Dude. Stop drinking the kool-aid. The VA layoffs are massive, and the've already impacted care. If you can't see that, you're too blind by your political allegiance to see a president who acts in violation of your enlistment oath at worst, and at best violates your personal contact with the feds for care.
Nobody wins a tariff war, and certainly not one of this breadth and scope. We will all be paying for this for years to come.
The thing that is so stupid about the tariffs is that Trump already tried this strategy in his 1st term and it was a complete failure. American farmers had to get $28 billion in taxpayer funded bailouts to prevent the farming industry in the U.S. from collapsing. So instead of creating a better market for farmers, the tariffs just created unnecessary debt for Americans that pay taxes.
Keep in mind that farming requires seasonal lead time to make decisions about crops and livestock. This administration has already impulsively cancelled agricultural purchases for USAID and now for domestic food banks. They've also deported or threatened migrant workers who would normally do the planting and picking. Now, as China and others countries impose retaliatory tariffs on US agricultural products, farmers have already made seed purchases, planted some and are either holding or obligated to buy other crop seed. Similarly, breeding of livestock is already well under way. Do they go ahead and grow the stuff planned for export, or do they cull herds, plow under crops and let seed rot as they try to cut their losses?
For domestic consumers, this may mean some low prices on a few things they don't want and higher prices on things they do, as farmers seek to offset their huge losses on exports, or simply go out of business and don't grow anything for anyone. Similar chaos will impact manufacturing industries like at Apple, but it'll be immediate and hugely damaging in the Agricultural sector. Again, there's no pleasure in seeing this pain, but the people hurt are the same ones in red-state "flyover country" who were sold a bill of goods by a con that would make Bernie Madoff blush. Watch this summer for the news stories about farmers going bankrupt. Willie Nelson will show up to help, but there's only so much he can do. Also watch this summer for the stories about famine all over the globe as the disruptions affect the poorest people everywhere. People are going to die because of one man's egotistical bluster.
Well, I guess people must have been dying worse in these other countries who have already been tariffing the USA horrendously. I guess China is killing its people by adding even more tariffs on the USA… the whole world is going to die all because orange man bad. It’s worse than nukes!
This is what the government spending cuts and tariffs are about. If there's a better way to fix the debt issue other than cutting spending and trying to make up trade deficits, they'd probably like to hear some ideas. These moves suggest they don't have any better ones.
In mid-October last year, the widely respected financial journal, The Economist, ran with this headline and cover story: "The American Economy: The Envy of the World." And the sub-head was: "The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust." Not bad for the country that Trump has would have the brain-dead believe is in an "economic emergency" and the trading partner punching bag of the world. If so many countries are taking advantage of us, it would seem they're doing a pretty bad job of it!
The last time we tried tariffs this insane (Trump's are actually worse than Smoot-Hawley), they helped usher in the Great Depression. So there's your "proof of concept" and the reason high tariffs have been discredited by economists left, right and center ever since. It also goes without saying that triggering a recession and stagflation with this stupidity will cut growth and revenue, thereby driving up deficits even higher. And spare me the BS that Trump, the self-styled King of Debt, has ANY interest in solving the debt problem. In his first term, his unpaid for tax breaks to the richest blew up the national debt by more than all 44 previous presidents COMBINED.
As for spending cuts: the Pentagon budget is nearly $850 billion dollars and for decades has been spending more each year than the next 8-10 largest militaries in the world COMBINED. So how is it that we're always falling behind our adversaries? Why are so many weapons systems wildly overbudget, hugely behind schedule and never work as advertised? Seems like a place that's rife with waste, fraud and abuse. Musk, himself, has excoriated "idiots who are still building the F-35" and has pleaded, "...in the name of all this is holy, let us stop the worst military value for the money in history, which is the F-35 program." Did DOGE stop it? Nope. Where are the mass DOGE firings at the Pentagon? Why hasn't DOGE taking over the Pentagon computers? Why hasn't DOGE limited Pentagon credit cards to $1? Instead, DOGE is devastating health care and services for the veterans who risked their bodies and lives in defense of this country. Nice! DOGE isn't looking for waste, fraud and abuse--it is indiscriminately taking a chainsaw to the government to free up more money for tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
Big BS about veterans, I am DV and not lost a single cents, in fact my health care is far to none. Stop your big BS about veterans please
So, you're saying that right-wing media aren't reporting the massive cuts and layoffs DOGE is making at the VA? Do you have any clue what is going on around you? That last question was rhetorical, I know you don't.
it’s called efficiency. Cutting waste to maximize organizational health. That’s a good thing.
Any business knows this.
Bloat is bad. Lean, mean machine is good.
We prune trees and bushes to redirect the flow from dead, useless branches to healthy, productive ones. That’s what going on here at organizations in the government. There is literally only good to come of it. Americans are shocked to see where our tax dollars have been wasted. It’s finally being addressed.
Veterans now will have a better shot of money actually going to their care instead of dead end pointless endeavors.
This is an absurd take on the VA, that feeds too heavily from the right-wing propaganda machine. It's been under-staffed and under-capacity for years decades. The layoffs of caretakers, the cancellation of research on veteran-specific conditions and so forth, aren't and haven't done anything but make it worse.
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https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/04/03/trump-tariffs-techdirt
In Bill Clinton's final term the U.S. was running a tax surplus and the $$ was being used to pay down the debt (as part of a bipartisan agreement). When George W. Bush took office, his administration declared that the surplus represented overtaxation, VP Cheney infamously declared that deficits "don't matter" and they started up deficit spending again. The most significant parts of that deficit spending were the Bush Tax Cuts and the invasion/occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.
When Barack Obama took office after Bush, the vast majority of the debt was driven by those tax cuts and the trillions in costs from the Afghanistan/Iraq wars. Republicans returned to claiming the deficit mattered with a Democrat in the White House and used the last six years of Obama's presidency to enforce austerity measures, like insisting that every new dollar of spending required a dollar in cuts.
When Trump took office for his first term, Republicans again abandoned concerns about the deficit and passed a $2 trillion stimulus in the form of a tax cut. For comparison, they limited the stimulus for the Great Recession in Obama's 1st term to less than $900 billion. Now for Trump's 2nd term they want to make the $2 trillion tax cut permanent and add trillions more in new tax cuts. They believed that allowing DOGE to run wild firing federal workers and eliminating agencies would provide cover for the massive amount of new debt they were going to add through the tax cuts but DOGE has already been exposed as a scam that adds to the debt rather than cutting it. For example, the DOGE firings at the IRS are projected to cost the United States $500 billion in revenue. That's because every IRS agent that is employed brings in multiple times more revenue than their own salary.
Oh, right. Because in much of the manufacturing industry, there are no foreign and domestic manufacturers anymore. Ford makes parts and entire cars on either or both sides of the border. Honda has a huge plant in Ohio and Volkswagen has one in Tennessee, and just like Ford, GM and Chrysler, their cars are made of foreign and domestic parts, some of which will be taxed multiple times as they go back and forth across the border.
On a social and economic level, non-exploitive trade between countries helps raise the standard of living on both sides. Did China have a sizable middle class of citizens who could afford luxury goods from around the world because they had disposable income before they started trading with the west? I don’t think so. Apple would not have a Chinese customer base if the US and other western countries hadn’t started trading openly with China. Yeah, there are certainly some disparities involved, but the net benefits of free trade throughout are still huge.
Mutual benefits can only exist where there is no widespread exploitation by either side. The presence of exploitation should not be measured based solely on monetary trade imbalances. That would be totally ignorant. This is especially true when the consumer base on one side is far different than the consumer base on the other. The nature and type of advantages that each side has can be very different. Apple has an advantage in manufacturing in Asia partly due to having the suppliers closer, lower labor costs, and lower manufacturing costs. The bigger advantage currently is it gives them the massive agility and scale that is simply not available domestically. They can ramp up 25,000 new workers and the required new and updated manufacturing lines in weeks or a couple of months. Doing the same thing domestically could take very many months or even years, especially when the skilled labor required in modern manufacturing processes is not widely or readily available. On the other side, they get much needed jobs to help transition them out of a low growth economy and are now on the path to having a larger middle class who are more likely to purchase goods that are marketed by western companies, like Apple.
To basically claim that any trading partner that has a monetary imbalance of trade in their favor is engaged in exploitive practices against the US is ridiculous. The bottom line is that the current clown circus trying to run (or ruin) our economy is ridiculously narrow minded with narrow views of trade and mutual benefits that border on the microscopic. We are currently witnessing devolution happening in real time.
FWIW, getting deal invoice pricing for a car has always been really easy. Rather than buy a car that is sitting on the lot you ask them to order one for you. I have never had a dealer not give me invoice when I do that. They get their cut for submitting the order and they have virtually no costs related to the sale. The cars on the lot they have to insure, maintain and employee sales people to sell. So those will typically include markup behind the invoice.
foolish in the extreme.
For domestic consumers, this may mean some low prices on a few things they don't want and higher prices on things they do, as farmers seek to offset their huge losses on exports, or simply go out of business and don't grow anything for anyone. Similar chaos will impact manufacturing industries like at Apple, but it'll be immediate and hugely damaging in the Agricultural sector. Again, there's no pleasure in seeing this pain, but the people hurt are the same ones in red-state "flyover country" who were sold a bill of goods by a con that would make Bernie Madoff blush. Watch this summer for the news stories about farmers going bankrupt. Willie Nelson will show up to help, but there's only so much he can do. Also watch this summer for the stories about famine all over the globe as the disruptions affect the poorest people everywhere. People are going to die because of one man's egotistical bluster.
Source: I too am a veteran, with VA healthcare.
Well, I guess people must have been dying worse in these other countries who have already been tariffing the USA horrendously. I guess China is killing its people by adding even more tariffs on the USA… the whole world is going to die all because orange man bad. It’s worse than nukes!