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Totally. I’ve completely given up hope that any of those folks are salvageable in terms of seeing the light when it comes to Trump.
Tariffs Catch-All
- Thread starter BubbaOtis
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I'll put this this way, you're more likely to hear the highest ranking member of the Wolfpack Club say "Valvano was an overrated cheat who is only remembered because he got cancer and became sympathetic before he died" than you are to EVER hear fault found with Donald Trump by his supporters.
superrific
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The future is not written.
Each and every industry AND each and every policy.
I knew a few rich kids who did that in the mid-‘80’s. I biked around Europe - which, kinda made me a rich kid compared to most.
I don’t think it was a huge savings. Certain things had to be done to the car to make it USA-compliant. Switching out the windshield was one.
According to one good friend, it was a wash.
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I knew one guy that said he did it. Not a huge savings, I believe he said he saved a little even including the cost for the week in Germany.
My girlfriend in ‘85 picked up a BMW. Part of the reason was it was a model derivative that almost never made it to the States.
Her Dad bought it for her as a college graduation present.
She and a girlfriend drove it ALL OVER Western Europe.
She spent more in gas in two months than any possible “savings.”
We did have a few nice hook-ups in France, Germany, and Austria.
My remembrance is that the ludicrous exchange rate in 1985 made “picking up your German car in Germany” briefly popular for rich people.
I know I bought $1,000 worth of pounds for $1.03 that year. I bought $1,000 worth of French francs for close to 10 francs to the dollar. The Swiss franc was less expensive than normal but not stupidly cheap…..but, it was “cheap.” The Deutschmark got close to being stupidly cheap that year…..I think I bought $1,000 at 3.3 DM……
I felt so rich in France that summer……especially bumfuck, off-the-beaten-path rural France. I never wanted to leave. My buddy, who spoke ZERO French and wasn’t flush…..he wanted to leave.
I’d been saving for this trip for years and had saved a ton. My parents had gone to Cambridge in Summer ‘84 and my Dad was always monitoring exchange rates…..so, I started following it closely. I think my Dad started buying pounds at $1.32 and thinking that was great and then the price kept dropping.
superrific
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Just looked it up -- you could have gotten 3.3 DM for a dollar in Feb 85. Was that when you were there? by summer it had fallen to 2.9-3.
You're right that the pound was at 1.32 in summer of 84. You couldn't have bought for 1.03, because it bottomed out at 1.07, but that's pretty damn good for a 40 year old memory. But again, that low was in Feb 85 (obviously when the dollar was at its strongest).
In Feb 85, francs were 10 to a buck, but by summer it had fallen to 8.5.
You're right that the pound was at 1.32 in summer of 84. You couldn't have bought for 1.03, because it bottomed out at 1.07, but that's pretty damn good for a 40 year old memory. But again, that low was in Feb 85 (obviously when the dollar was at its strongest).
In Feb 85, francs were 10 to a buck, but by summer it had fallen to 8.5.
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The Netherlands' parliament on Tuesday approved a series of motions calling on the government to reduce dependence on U.S. software companies, including by creating a cloud services platform under Dutch control.
While such initiatives have foundered in the past due to a lack of viable European alternatives, lawmakers said changing relations with the United States under the presidency of Donald Trump have given the issue fresh urgency.
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Cross-border trips to the U.S. reach COVID lows with nearly 500,000 fewer travellers in February
Barbara Barrett is the executive director of the Frontier Duty Free Association, a group that represents 32 independently owned duty-free shops that dot the Canadian side of the land border from coast to coast.She said the travel decline is "catastrophic" and the mostly family-run stores she represents are seeing sales drop off dramatically.
She said sales never really recovered after the pandemic and now, with the recent disruptions, are down about 80 per cent compared to pre-2020 figures.
"Without hyperbole, it's a dire situation. It's very worrying," Barrett said in an interview with CBC News. "It's pandemic-level stuff for sure. It's dramatic — the borders are just not seeing the traffic."
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As world leaders grasp for a response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, they have two models to study — and both have plenty of pitfalls.
Two of the first targets of Trump’s trade ire, Mexico and Canada, have been going back and forth with the White House for over a month now to try and fend off steep new tariffs. But they’ve pursued very different strategies: Ottawa has taken a more confrontational approach, including immediate trade retaliation, drawing swift White House retribution; Mexico City has tried to lay low and buy time, but doesn’t have much more to show for it.
With a new round of tariffs on steel and aluminum that went into effect this week and worldwide “reciprocal” tariffs on the horizon next month, other countries have been taking notes. The lessons they draw will help determine just how much the global economy cracks up as Trump’s trade war deepens.
“There’s the ongoing debate that’s been consistent: Is it better to grovel and kiss the ring or is it better to stand up to the bully?” said William Reinsch, a former Commerce undersecretary now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Both have worked on occasion and both have not worked on occasion. So it’s hard to know in any given circumstance which one is the better tactic.”
A senior European Union official, granted anonymity per the ground rules of the briefing, told reporters on Wednesday that the bloc was “constantly speaking” with other world leaders about the U.S. tariffs and “comparing notes.” But, the official added, the EU is not yet coordinating its reaction with other countries.
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Buy Canadian movement starts to take a sizable bite out of U.S. business
U.S. tour operators and American distilleries hit hard by surge in patriotism among Canadian shoppers
www.theglobeandmail.com
U.S. tour operators are reporting booking declines of as much as 85 per cent, while American distilleries are losing major deals. Meanwhile, Canadian grocers are posting a bump in domestic product sales of up to 10 per cent.
Donald Trump’s jabs about annexation, along with a 25-per-cent levy on steel and aluminum from Canada and the U.S. President’s threats of a 25-per-cent tariff on most Canadian imports have prompted a rallying cry to “Buy Canadian” across this country.
While consumer boycotts – combined with government policy actions – are causing trouble south of the border, concerns are bubbling up about the toll on Canadian businesses, too.
“To use some of the words I hear from tour company members of the National Tour Association, the drop-off is ‘astronomical’ when speaking about Canadians booking group travel to the United States,” said Catherine Prather, president of the Kentucky-based organization, which specializes in group tours.
One National Tour Association member operator reported just two bookings for U.S. tours in the past two weeks compared to 39 bookings during the same period in 2024, she said. Another Canadian operator, with 85 per cent of their business focused on tours to the U.S., had to scrap every U.S. departure for March, April and May due to client cancellations.
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I have a young friend that works for a large outfit in the Triangle that is in the LED business-very reliant on Chinese imports. She says some of her customers are talking about setting up logistics to have Chinese goods send to another country , then exported here.... etc
Crazy times
Crazy times
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The proposed imposition of US port fees on Chinese-built and Chinese-operated ships could dramatically impact US chemical exports and result in China being the biggest beneficiary, panelists said.
The potential fees would result in the cost of a smaller vessel, currently paying a port fee of around $20,000, soaring to about $500,000, said Udo Lange, CEO of chemical tanker operator Stolt-Nielsen, in a panel session focused on supply chain issues on March 18. For larger ships, the current fee of around $40,000 would soar to between $1.5 million and $3.0 million, he said.
"If you pay these fees, they will lead to a 30% increase on certain chemicals in deep sea, and on the shorter routes [with] the smaller ships, it's around a 70% increase. So the outcome of that is, of course, that US exports are not competitive anymore and China, funnily enough, would be the winner of this," Lange said.
The US Trade Representative has proposed charging $1 million per instance for vessel operators from China to enter a US port. Fleets with Chinese-built vessels would be charged up to $1.5 million per entrance based on the percentage of such vessels in the fleet. The USTR said the rule would boost shipbuilding efforts in the US and reduce dependence on China's fast-growing commercial fleet. China owned over 19% of the world's commercial fleet as of January 2024, the USTR said.
Fellow WPC panelist Gina Fyffe, CEO of trader Integra Petrochemicals, said, "one of the big losers in this if the port tax comes in will be almost certainly the US, and that will happen quite quickly." Looking at the global chemical tanker and gas tanker fleet, Fyffe noted that a "large percentage of the gas fleet was built in China." As a result, tariffs imposed would result in "no ethane, no LPG, no ethylene. So who's that hurting?" she said.
Lange noted that the chemical industry is the second largest manufacturing industry in the US and that the port fees would impact 25% of US GDP overall. US chemical exports are valued at around $160 billion, he said.
The stainless steel tanker fleet of 850 vessels represents about 1% of the global fleet, which consists of about 20,000 ships in total, he said.
"The risk on the other side is massive," he said. "You affect 25% of GDP. And building chemical tankers is more complicated than containerships. So building an industry would probably take around a decade."
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How's that port tax taste now WV?
I was buying currency in Spring ‘85.
superrific
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Good memory, then. You were off by a few pennies, according to publicly available data, which is impressive for something that happened a long time ago.