Tariffs Catch-All

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superrific said:
Trying to beat China in a trade war is like invading Russia in winter.

It's not a winnable battle. Russia could skirmish, retreat into the show, consume the local supplies and burn the rest -- all more or less indefinitely. China has an analogous ability in a trade war. They have so much hunkering-down potential, and we have a president with a one-week attention span and a population that will not be going along for the ride. We'd lose even they didn't have the minerals. Having the minerals is just a bonus for them.
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I'm not sure China has as much "hunkering-down potential" as you do. My understanding is that China cannot operate (ie feed their population) without substantial imports of both fuel and food including fertilizer. China can be cut off from important supplies via sanctions and blockade far outside the short operating range of the Chinese Navy. However, that would require cooperation from our many allies and trading partners that Trump just told to go screw. There is also the very real probability that such an act could quickly turn into a shooting war.

I've long felt that China isn't built to wage military war, they wage war via business and economics. In that light, January 20th, 2025 might as well have been September 1, 1939.
 
nycfan said:
IMG_6422.jpeg


“… Here’s what Trump and his sycophants don’t understand about international trade: It’s not about what you can sell, it’s about what you can buy.

Think for a minute about the finances of individuals. Why do people work? Not to be able to boast that they ran trade surpluses with their employers — “Hey, they paid me a lot, and I hardly bought anything from them.” No, people sell their labor so that they can afford to buy stuff.

…
But what matters in a trade war is the fact that China can fairly easily find other agricultural suppliers, buying soybeans from Brazil instead of Iowa.

By contrast, the United States will have a hard time replacing many of the goods it imports from China. Furthermore, many of the goods we buy from China are industrial inputs rather than consumer goods.

So Trump has started a trade war that will disrupt our own supply chains. Remember Covid and its immediate aftermath? Remember how shortages spread through the economy and fueled inflation? Those days are about to come back, inflicting especially large damage on the manufacturing sector Trump claims he will revive. …”

paulkrugman.substack.com

Why Trump Will Lose His Trade War

His people don’t know what they’re doing or what they want
paulkrugman.substack.com paulkrugman.substack.com
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To win a trade war requires the nuance and precision of a skilled surgeon. What Trump has is a group of monkeys trying to fuck a football.
 
Kraftyheel89 said:
Wow, Trump's tariffs have brought in a whopping $500 Million so far. And these are real figures (Customs and Border Protections), not the made up garbage the Trump team puts out.

I am beginning to think there might still be an INTERNAL Revenue Service, and all our funding will not come from tariff taxes paid for by U.S. customers.

I mean, after Elon sends every Murican their $5K checks he promised, we might just have to pay taxes one more year.

Trump claims $2 Billion per day has been collected..
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Its obvious why Trump uses 2 Billion per day. He thinks he can replace at least the corporate income tax and be a hero to his kind of folks. But he neglects the net math like the farmer bailouts he's already talking about.
 
BlueSmoke said:
To frame it in terms of winning and losing misses what Trump is all about. He runs a reality tv show on a daily basis. Chaos, and yes losing and reframing a loss as a win is what he does. That, and one foot on the gas and one foot on the brakes is how he roles.

It boggles the mind how he gets by. But he's proven that losing is not much of a speed bump.
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Because he has built a cult of supporters who never question him, and is the beneficiary of a media sphere which never holds him accountable for anything. Competence and positive results are not requirements for Trump to “succeed.”
 
Kraftyheel89 said:
Wow, Trump's tariffs have brought in a whopping $500 Million so far. And these are real figures (Customs and Border Protections), not the made up garbage the Trump team puts out.

I am beginning to think there might still be an INTERNAL Revenue Service, and all our funding will not come from tariff taxes paid for by U.S. customers.

I mean, after Elon sends every Murican their $5K checks he promised, we might just have to pay taxes one more year.

Trump claims $2 Billion per day has been collected..
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$500M collected at an uncountable cost...
 
dcphx said:
I'm not sure China has as much "hunkering-down potential" as you do. My understanding is that China cannot operate (ie feed their population) without substantial imports of both fuel and food including fertilizer. China can be cut off from important supplies via sanctions and blockade far outside the short operating range of the Chinese Navy. However, that would require cooperation from our many allies and trading partners that Trump just told to go screw. There is also the very real probability that such an act could quickly turn into a shooting war.

I've long felt that China isn't built to wage military war, they wage war via business and economics. In that light, January 20th, 2025 might as well have been September 1, 1939.
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How can we justify sanctions for them responding to our stupidity?
 
dcphx said:
I'm not sure China has as much "hunkering-down potential" as you do. My understanding is that China cannot operate (ie feed their population) without substantial imports of both fuel and food including fertilizer. China can be cut off from important supplies via sanctions and blockade far outside the short operating range of the Chinese Navy. However, that would require cooperation from our many allies and trading partners that Trump just told to go screw. There is also the very real probability that such an act could quickly turn into a shooting war.
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Well, I don't know all that much about the hunkering down potential in total. I was merely referring to the idea that China can deprive their citizens of material goods and they are powerless to stop it, whereas the American government has a very hard time doing that.

Nobody will back up the US for sanctions on China. It's too important a trading partner for basically everyone. That was true Jan 1 of this year. Now, it seems unlikely that anyone will back US sanctions at all unless they agree.

Today I saw some article saying that Trump was hoping to use tariff pressure to get other countries to get behind a China boycott. LOL. He has no idea how people work, does he? He certainly doesn't understand international politics. Absolutely nobody is going to get behind a China boycott because Trump threatens them with tariffs.
 


So … no deal? Look, purely selfishly, I want them to figure this out and not tank the economy. I want to retire in the relatively mid-term (next 3-5 years tops) and I don’t want these incompetents blowing that up, TBH.


That said, from a purely POLITICAL STRATEGIST POV, you don’t put the POTUS in a room with representatives from another country, particularly non-peers in terms of title, unless you are certain to walk out with a deal s/he can tout. You just don’t.
 
Oh, he be touting. Did you not reas about the bigly progress? MAGA will eat that up. That's all they need, so much winning for them.

Then reality sets in for them in approximately 4 to 6 weeks.

And don't worry about retirement nyc, full recovery long before you retire. Hell, we made it out of the Great Recession, worst economy and markets of our lifetimes. Unless you were 100% in growth stocks (and diversified), you were back to even in 2 years or less. Then it took off like a rocket.
 
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“… Bessent said earlier that exchange rates could be on the agenda but Ryosei Akazawa said neither side took up the topic.“
 
dcphx said:
I'm not sure China has as much "hunkering-down potential" as you do. My understanding is that China cannot operate (ie feed their population) without substantial imports of both fuel and food including fertilizer. China can be cut off from important supplies via sanctions and blockade far outside the short operating range of the Chinese Navy. However, that would require cooperation from our many allies and trading partners that Trump just told to go screw. There is also the very real probability that such an act could quickly turn into a shooting war.

I've long felt that China isn't built to wage military war, they wage war via business and economics. In that light, January 20th, 2025 might as well have been September 1, 1939.
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"Hunkering-down potential". I seem to recall that during the covid lockdowns, they had tremendous hunkering down stamina. Under Xi, it seems it takes a huge amount of pressure for him to do a U-turn.
 
Kraftyheel89 said:
And don't worry about retirement nyc, full recovery long before you retire. Hell, we made it out of the Great Recession, worst economy and markets of our lifetimes. Unless you were 100% in growth stocks (and diversified), you were back to even in 2 years or less. Then it took off like a rocket.
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Really, Trump is doing the same supply chain breakdown that he did last time with covid. He didn't fix it last time. It took a different President to do that. If Trump actually fixes it before his term runs out, then that's a pretty bad indicator how the next Presidential election will go.
 
I see the EU central bank is cutting interest rates. So how will that affect our bond market since that seems to be a point of major concern?
 
BlueSmoke said:
"Hunkering-down potential". I seem to recall that during the covid lockdowns, they had tremendous hunkering down stamina. Under Xi, it seems it takes a huge amount of pressure for him to do a U-turn.
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From what I understand, Chinese state media have been prepping the country for economic war against the US, and so the populace (at least those who consume news media) look at it as a badge of honor to sacrifice for the good of the country.
 
BlueSmoke said:
I see the EU central bank is cutting interest rates. So how will that affect our bond market since that seems to be a point of major concern?
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Ordinarily, it would be expected to somewhat weaken the Euro against the US Dollar and dampen interest in the EU bonds due to assumed downward pressure on those yields, increasing the relative strength of the dollar and driving more investors to buy US Treasuries, but things are so out of kilter at the moment and this rate cut was so widely anticipated/baked into expectations anyway, who knows?
 
heelslegup said:
www.csis.org

The Consequences of China’s New Rare Earths Export Restrictions

China has imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements and magnets in retaliation for new U.S. tariffs. These materials are vital to defense technologies, but the United States is entirely dependent on China for their supply.
www.csis.org www.csis.org
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Trump is going about it in a stupid way but I will give him some credit in that we should have never allowed ourselves to be so reliant on China for these things.

The solution would be subsidies to build up US capacity for security purposes or at least create a reserve.

The dumbest move is what Trump is doing.
 
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