Tariffs Catch-All

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farce© said:
By “bureaucrats” you mean people who have spent years learning the intricacies of the global trade system and who know a hell of a lot more than you or I. I believe the proper term for these people would be “experts.” But you just keep on using your purposeful slander…your “independent thinking” repeatedly shows us your ignorance.
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You can look at our national debt and say you trust our leaders to act intelligently and act in the best interest of the country?
 
ZenMode said:
Like I said, I'm not saying that there haven't been attempts to adjust tariffs, I'm saying I don't trust Wikipedia for anything. I don't trust the bureaucrats, Even if they've tried 50 times, to adjust them correctly, especially when you're talking about poorer countries.
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1. You not trusting Wikipedia is a you problem. It's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how wikipedia works. wikipedia is by far the most reliable general purpose linkable reference work on the internet. You don't want to trust it, that's your choice but I'm not changing my posting habits for your stupidity.

Plus, the real problem isn't wikipedia, it's that you got dunked on so hard.

2. Here's what you wrote: "The strategy, in general, should be to come to agreements with each country so we aren't getting hit with large tariffs while charging low tariffs."

So I see now that you've conceded that this has in fact been the strategy. The country did what you wanted it to do for 50 years. It worked.

3. You don't trust the bureaucrats? Another you problem. How do you think huge negotiations get done? The presidents of each country get together in a room for years to hash it out? Every country on Earth has trade representatives. Every country on Earth has bureaucracy -- just like every big company has middle managers. Middle management and bureaucracy have acquired negative connotations, but of course there's a reason why they exist everywhere: you cannot run a complex organization without multiple levels of decision makers.

4. Even more foundationally, the lesson you should be drawing from Trump is that bureaucrats are actually pretty good. You should be trusting them. They are by no means ideal -- nothing is -- but they are far, far better than the alternative.

Look at how much Trump has destroyed in a few months by disregarding bureaucracy. Our national aviation system is fucked because they didn't consult any experts before taking a chainsaw to the FAA. Schools don't know where or if money will be coming to them, because the Trump people have been cancelling grants and withholding money. One of my autistic sons is probably going to lose his staff support at school because they can't afford it, for example. Public health is at a low point; FEMA basically doesn't exist. We're losing our weather forecasts because Trump shuttered the agency.

The bureaucracy >>> Trump and his clowns. That should be a lesson of our time.
 
superrific said:
1. You not trusting Wikipedia is a you problem. It's based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how wikipedia works. wikipedia is by far the most reliable general purpose linkable reference work on the internet. You don't want to trust it, that's your choice but I'm not changing my posting habits for your stupidity.

Plus, the real problem isn't wikipedia, it's that you got dunked on so hard.
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I don't think we define "dunk" the same way.
superrific said:
2. Here's what you wrote: "The strategy, in general, should be to come to agreements with each country so we aren't getting hit with large tariffs while charging low tariffs."
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Seems like a good strategy, yes.
superrific said:
So I see now that you've conceded that this has in fact been the strategy. The country did what you wanted it to do for 50 years. It worked.
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I think I missed something. Where was the "worked"?
superrific said:
3. You don't trust the bureaucrats? Another you problem. How do you think huge negotiations get done?
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Beurocrats.
superrific said:
The presidents of each country get together in a room for years to hash it out? Every country on Earth has trade representatives. Every country on Earth has bureaucracy -- just like every big company has middle managers. Middle management and bureaucracy have acquired negative connotations, but of course there's a reason why they exist everywhere: you cannot run a complex organization without multiple levels of decision makers.
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I agree. I'm not saying negotiators, aka beurocrats when it's government involved, aren't needed to do their work. I'm saying I don't trust them to do it correctly.
superrific said:
4. Even more foundationally, the lesson you should be drawing from Trump is that bureaucrats are actually pretty good. You should be trusting them. They are by no means ideal -- nothing is -- but they are far, far better than the alternative.
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I think the general anti-business as usual approach of the current administration gives me reason to trust them more than past administrations, which were much more likely to be the go-along-to-get-along types
superrific said:
Look at how much Trump has destroyed in a few months by disregarding bureaucracy.
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Especially with DOGE, right? How much pain has been felt from the those cuts? How have you, or anyone you know, been impacted?
superrific said:
Our national aviation system is fucked because they didn't consult any experts before taking a chainsaw to the FAA.
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We've been thousands of people short for years and are running on systems that were made in the, what, 70's? 80s? Do you think those two situations came about because of Trump?
superrific said:
Schools don't know where or if money will be coming to them, because the Trump people have been cancelling grants and withholding money. One of my autistic sons is probably going to lose his staff support at school because they can't afford it, for example. Public health is at a low point; FEMA basically doesn't exist. We're losing our weather forecasts because Trump shuttered the agency.

The bureaucracy >>> Trump and his clowns. That should be a lesson of our time.
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Some of the cuts may not have been ideal, I agree.
 
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ZenMode said:
Especially with DOGE, right? How much pain has been felt from the those cuts? How have you, or anyone you know, been impacted?

We've been thousands of people short for years and are running on systems that were made in the, what, 70's? 80s? Do you think those two situations came about because of Trump?
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1. If you count the people on this board as people I know, then absolutely. Many posters here have described how they have been fucked by DOGE cuts. And keep in mind, it would be worse but for the "bureaucrats" who have been blocking the lawless DOGE behavior.

2. Your point about the age of the ATC system cuts against you. It's been working since the 1970s. And it just stops working now? Is that a pure coincidence? Or was it because Trump fired the people who are needed to make it work.

It's almost as if people were trying to tell Trump that he was making a huge mess:

Loading…

www.politico.com

Oh. That's what being anti-business-as-usual means for Trump. It means fucking up the things that Americans have been able to take for granted for decades. You know, business as usual.

3. You mooks are so addicted to your fox-fueled outrage that you have lost touch with everything good about America. There are things that need fixing, absolutely 100%. I have ideas about that myself. But I can at least appreciate the things that work well. That's because I know things -- and knowing things, I can respect other people who know different things and use that knowledge to a desired end.

You, knowing nothing, can appreciate nothing.
 
ZenMode said:
Like I said, I'm not saying that there haven't been attempts to adjust tariffs, I'm saying I don't trust Wikipedia for anything. I don't trust the bureaucrats, Even if they've tried 50 times, to adjust them correctly, especially when you're talking about poorer countries.
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And yet you seem to place great faith in someone you openly admit is a pathological liar.
 
It's also funny to hear people shit on bureaucrats when Trump's political appointees have compromised basically all of the DoD's information technology. Everything I've read is that it's an almost certainty that China, Russia, Iran etc. have spy ware on the SecDef devices and throughout the DoD and NSA. Bureaucrats didn't do that. That was Trump's people.
 
superrific said:

U.S. GDP | Historical Chart & Data

GDP at purchaser's prices is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and...
www.macrotrends.net www.macrotrends.net
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Could that also have something to do with the population doubling since 1960.

The fact that there has been GDP growth doesn't mean there couldn't have been more.
 
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We had negative GDP in Q1 2025 because of Trump’s dumbass policies, so GDP growth is definitely not always what it should be.
We are seeing the same thing with the stock market (not nearly as high as it should be) and interest rates (should be lower).
All of this is 100% on Trump.
 
ZenMode said:
Could that also have something to do with the population doubling since 1960.

The fact that there has been GDP growth doesn't mean that it's the most GDP growth we could have had.
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The GDP in 2024 was about 54 times higher than in 1960. Adjust for doubling of the population and it falls to a 2700% gain. Oh dear.

It is a truism that our imaginations can always dream of things being better than they are. In any event, it certainly wasn't trade holding back the U.S. Let's do a chart for a country with high tariffs attempting to replace imports with domestically produced goods.

Argentina GDP Growth Rate 1961-2025 | MacroTrends

Annual percentage growth rate of GDP at market prices based on constant local currency. Aggregates are based on constant 2010 U.S. dollars. GDP is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the...
www.macrotrends.net www.macrotrends.net

Argentina's GDP has increased by about 300% since 1960. As its population has also doubled, it's been clocking in at 1/18 of the US growth. Remember: Trump's policies are almost exactly the Argentine policies from the 1950s and 1960s that produced such an economic catastrophe.
 
superrific said:
1. If you count the people on this board as people I know, then absolutely. Many posters here have described how they have been fucked by DOGE cuts. And keep in mind, it would be worse but for the "bureaucrats" who have been blocking the lawless DOGE behavior.

2. Your point about the age of the ATC system cuts against you. It's been working since the 1970s. And it just stops working now? Is that a pure coincidence? Or was it because Trump fired the people who are needed to make it work.

It's almost as if people were trying to tell Trump that he was making a huge mess:

Loading…

www.politico.com

Oh. That's what being anti-business-as-usual means for Trump. It means fucking up the things that Americans have been able to take for granted for decades. You know, business as usual.

3. You mooks are so addicted to your fox-fueled outrage that you have lost touch with everything good about America. There are things that need fixing, absolutely 100%. I have ideas about that myself. But I can at least appreciate the things that work well. That's because I know things -- and knowing things, I can respect other people who know different things and use that knowledge to a desired end.

You, knowing nothing, can appreciate nothing.
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I agree that the freezing of funding, especially for businesses that contracted with the US, wasn't a good thing. It could have been handled differently and maybe the ATC situation has been made worse by cuts. I don't know. But the panic regarding the "hatchet" DOGE cuts was widespread. With the exception of some hurt by funding freezes, which wasn't a headcount cut, has there been any significant impact to federal government services? Have social security checks stopped going out? Have students been unable to attend college due to issues with student loans? Has there really been anything significant that warranted the panic?
 
ZenMode said:
I agree that the freezing of funding, especially for businesses that contracted with the US, wasn't a good thing. It could have been handled differently and maybe the ATC situation has been made worse by cuts. I don't know. But the panic regarding the "hatchet" DOGE cuts was widespread. With the exception of some hurt by funding freezes, which wasn't a headcount cut, has there been any significant impact to federal government services? Have social security checks stopped going out? Have students been unable to attend college due to issues with student loans? Has there really been anything significant that warranted the panic?
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Well, most of the cuts that people were afraid of have been blocked, so that is what has prevented a lot of the bad stuff people panicked about from happening.
And, the cuts are only a couple months old so it may take a while for some of the bad stuff to materialize.
But, it is estimated that 3 to 4 million additional deaths (including tens of thousands of children) will occur in the next year as a result of cuts to USAID. I guess we shall see.
 
ChileG said:
Well, most of the cuts that people were afraid of have been blocked, so that is what has prevented a lot of the bad stuff people panicked about from happening.
And, the cuts are only a couple months old so it may take a while for some of the bad stuff to materialize.
But, it is estimated that 3 to 4 million additional deaths (including tens of thousands of children) will occur in the next year as a result of cuts to USAID. I guess we shall see.
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Those deaths will be to brown people in 3rd world countries. MAGAts and Bo-siders are good with that.
 
ZenMode said:
I agree that the freezing of funding, especially for businesses that contracted with the US, wasn't a good thing. It could have been handled differently and maybe the ATC situation has been made worse by cuts. I don't know. But the panic regarding the "hatchet" DOGE cuts was widespread. With the exception of some hurt by funding freezes, which wasn't a headcount cut, has there been any significant impact to federal government services? Have social security checks stopped going out? Have students been unable to attend college due to issues with student loans? Has there really been anything significant that warranted the panic?
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1. Many of the DOGE cuts have been blocked. Those blocks might only be temporary and in some cases are almost certain to be.
2. The "severance" period for the people who accepted Elon's "please leave" offer hasn't expired yet. So they are still getting paychecks, for the time being.
3. Has there been any significant impact to government services? Let's see:

UPDATED | What's Closed, Canceled Around The National Park System (parks)
Local scientists, fisheries and weather forecasters feeling impact of NOAA cuts (fisheries and weather reports)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/11/trump-government-operations-halt-funding-cuts/ (EPA)

among many many other effects. I'm not doing all the research for you. What you're displaying again is your insistence that your life experience is complete. If you don't experience something, it must not exist or it must be overblown. It's your constant refrain.
 
superrific said:
1. Many of the DOGE cuts have been blocked. Those blocks might only be temporary and in some cases are almost certain to be.
2. The "severance" period for the people who accepted Elon's "please leave" offer hasn't expired yet. So they are still getting paychecks, for the time being.
3. Has there been any significant impact to government services? Let's see:

UPDATED | What's Closed, Canceled Around The National Park System (parks)
Local scientists, fisheries and weather forecasters feeling impact of NOAA cuts (fisheries and weather reports)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/11/trump-government-operations-halt-funding-cuts/ (EPA)

among many many other effects. I'm not doing all the research for you. What you're displaying again is your insistence that your life experience is complete. If you don't experience something, it must not exist or it must be overblown. It's your constant refrain.
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I don't think your link shows what you think it shows.

Were some campsites closed temporarily? Yes. Were they all closed due to cuts? Not even close.

The first one listed is Great Smokey Mountain Park. I put in dates for early June and every campsite was available. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee - Recreation.gov

Arches National Park has all kinds of tours available and the Fiery Furnce is giving out permits: Fiery Furnace Permits - Arches National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, according to their calendar, has events every single day between now and October when they close for the winter. Special Events and Ranger Programs - Black Canyon Of The Gunnison National Park (U.S. National Park Service)

I could go on, but probably don't need to.

My life experience has nothing to do with it. I'm just asking if there have been reports of any serious issues?
 
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