Trump

[DaveE]

Thread including numbers that back up the simple ratio calculation:


https://bsky.app/profile/davidfickling. ... uzuseuls2s

My brain is struggling to process this (in terms of it's simplicity and stupidity)

I'm reminded of the quote:

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

[mik]

I know we keep ripping into Trump, but he's thinking longer term :

Once Apple have moved their full end-to-end manufacturing and supply chain operations to the USA, and paid for new USA jobs to assemble devices at USA rates of pay, all USA citizens will be able to upgrade to the latest iPhone for just $3250 per handset, and then everyone will be happy. USA.

[DaveE]

Given how much of this seems to focus on the car industry, I'm sure Trump will welcome all these new unionised jobs...

[Mito Man]

It’ll be just like the 80’s when a mobile phone cost $3000 and a PC cost $5000.

I wonder if Trump will go full North Korea once he sees the effect automation and AI has on jobs.

[Simon]

Already sanctioned.

So apply the tariffs anyway, they make no difference, but you avoid the negative optics.

That would require a modicum of forethought.

Even with the sanctions US still has a trade deficit with Russia, so by Trumps own logic tarrifs still apply. But he won't argue with his boss, so obviously it won't happen.

[Sundayjumper]

Also, it has been pointed out they have sanctions on Iran, but still applied these tariffs. Omitting Russia was a deliberate thumbs-up to Putin and nothing to do with sanctions.

[Sundayjumper]

e281dcec-ae77-4654-8054-e16ae69a0e44.png (69.24 KiB) Viewed 3024 times

Deficit/Imports = 2.5bn/3bn = 83%, therefore by the logic extended to everyone else, he should be putting a 42% tariff on Russian imports.

[DeskJockey]

https://bsky.app/profile/heardislandgov ... uzye3vsu2j

[Matty]

It’ll be just like the 80’s when a mobile phone cost $3000 and a PC cost $5000.

I wonder if Trump will go full North Korea once he sees the effect automation and AI has on jobs.

This isn't new for Trump though, he had these stupid ideas last term, as Chapelle mocks

[Jobbo]

Has Liz Truss been advising Trump?

[Jobbo]

https://theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qa ... 819576375/

[Sundayjumper]

This made me laugh too much:

We go now live to our economics editor who has broken out the good whiskey and seems to be playing with a revolver. How are the markets reacting Greg?

[mik]

So how many shares do you reckon Trump & Trumpettes will have hoovered up whilst they have dropped in value, only for him to change his mind on a few aspects and the markets recover and……

[dinny_g]

[DaveE]

The media isn't really doing any reporting on the way he's come to these numbers and how daft they are (and they how they may have just come from chatGPT, Grok etc)

[DaveE]

An interesting comment I heard on these tariffs is that Trump is positioning them as being to benefit American manufacturers and American jobs

And yet the first thing the automakers do is go and see him and try and get exemptions from them

If these tariffs really would benefit in the way Trump claims, then why to (arguably) the biggest manufacturers in the US not want them?

[Rich B]

Could be some interesting loopholes we can exploit. Get stuff mostly built in China, import to us, “final assembly” in the u.k., then sell onto the USA undercutting the Chinese direct offering to the usa by 40%.

[DaveE]

This is a good explainer btw:

[Sundayjumper]

An interesting comment I heard on these tariffs is that Trump is positioning them as being to benefit American manufacturers and American jobs

And yet the first thing the automakers do is go and see him and try and get exemptions from them

If these tariffs really would benefit in the way Trump claims, then why to (arguably) the biggest manufacturers in the US not want them?

Well, firstly, the kind of factories needed if you’re going to onshore all that car production (or any production of that scale) take probably 10 years to build if you’re starting from zero. Finding land, getting approvals, designing it, that takes a long long before you even touch a shovel. Outside of construction nobody really appreciates this - designing a complex building costs about the same as actually building it. And you quite obviously can’t build it before you design it !

Plus you will need to find thousands of people that live nearby and want to work in a factory.

It could maybe work long term. If there was a coherent plan. But none of them care about long plans. None of them care about manufacturing. It’s all sound bites. They want their payoffs right now.

So the manufacturers will go pleading for exemptions and that’s exactly the plan right now. They’ll have to offer something in return. Either obedience or cash or cash equivalents. It’s all deliberate. Similar is already in progress with big law firms agreeing to hundreds of millions worth of free work in return for not being singled out for punishment.

Everyone has to pay protection money basically.

[dinny_g]

Added to the fact "Cars" are complex machines with hundreds of different materials needed to build them. It's not like Steel or Aluminium so they're never going to immune to the tariffs.

Even if you make the tyres in the US, the rubber has to be imported etc.