Trump / Musk (other than DOGE)

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super has really carried the water on this topic in this thread. Totally agree with his points. I would add a couple of comments that have me alarmed about this incredibly stupid policy gambit by Trump.

-Slapping tariffs on other countries will just result in retaliations from other countries, leaving consumers worse off. What gets me is that we have already been down this road before with disastrous results. The world did this back in the 1920s when different countries erected trade barriers; this tit for tat exacerbated the Great Depression.

-I'm always amazed how NAFTA gets all the blame for carving out the US manufacturing base. The impact of Asia is always undersold and the role of automation also gets short thrift.

-The greatest beneficiary of free trade has been the United States. The global economy has seen a move towards freer trade since the 1970s: its usually the US at the forefront of pushing this agenda, usually on pretty favorable turns (Exhibit A...look how many US agricultural interests receive so much protection). Its no coincidence that has coincided with one of the greatest expansions in economic history where the US and American companies have taken the lion's share. Sure we have had some foreign companies do well (thankfully....share in the spoils people), but take a look at the Global 1000 to see very clearly how American companies dominate.

-so let me see if I get this right...Trump not only wants to greatly curb migration from Mexico and other Latin American countries, but he also wants to limit their economic opportunities by curtailing their trade opportunities? Is his intention to doom Latin America to a perpetual underclass? The best thing that could happen to the US for a variety of reasons is to have the countries to its south develop robust economies. The only way you achieve that is through trade. One of the things that Bush 2 got right is that Latin America can be the cheap labor partner to the US and Canada to try and compete with Asia; sadly, US foreign policy the last twenty years has not operated with this framework.
 
There's a lot of truth here. I guess one might quibble with the causality, though. Is Trump making a choice to sell brand instead of policy? Or is he just incapable of talking about policy?

I see tariffs as integral to Trump's brand in two ways. First, his whole spiel about how foreigners are going to continue to do business in this country even though they will be taxed like never before is basically "Mexico will pay" redux. I don't think people fully appreciate how integral the "Mexico will pay" part was to the campaign. Trump, after all, was not the first person to run on a border wall. To MAGA, the border wall was never really about immigration; it was about humiliation. It was the fantasy that white Americans could make brown people pay for their own exclusion. Yeah, sure. So now it's foreign companies that are going to be paying us for the privilege of doing business here.

Second, tariffs are an incredibly grifting opportunity because so much is at the president's discretion. So of course Trump is drawn to it.

To put it simply, American tariffs made the Great Depression orders of magnitude worse and another contributor to thne eruption of World War II. They cause inflation of not just one, but at least two ways:

1. As a value added tax

2. Prevention of flow of US capital out of the country, reducing pressure in the US. Demand for the US dollar also retains its value as the premier American currency.

3. Tariffs also encourage other nations to impose retaliatory taxes and deliberately weaken their currency so that American products are unaffordable overseas. This of course costs Americans millions of jobs.


Trump is an infant.
 
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Criticizing Maher (who he obviously keeps watching despite complaining about him non-stop) and Fox.





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Whoever published this (accurate or unflattering??) selfie with Trump must secretly hate him.

 
Trump took time out of blaming Biden, Harris and Cooper for leaving people to drown and also denying him secret service as election interference to pump his crypto scam.

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I don't know why anyone supports anything associated with Musk. I truly don't. If you drive a Tesla, I'm scowling at you and not because it's electric. I won't even use the internet on cruise ships because it's Starlink based. I will actively deprive myself of quite literally anything if I know it's Musk related. I'll also continue to pressure my elected representatives to abandon anything Musk related. I'd rather the International Space Station crash and burn than be resupplied with SpaceX rockets. Fuck absolutely everything related to Elon Musk.
 
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