> but many on this very site would need to give up a little bit of their privilege to reduce the pain felt by many of their fellow citizens.

Agreed. However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most. The pain is felt most by the low-skill workers you mentioned earlier.

If the solution was instead along the lines of changing tax-brackets to tax the 'privileged' more, that might have better addressed the problem you mention in the beginning.

Yes! "Trade Wars are Class Wars" by Klein & Pettis is the book to read if you want to hear actual economists with actual data talk about this.

> the upside of this system is felt by the entrepreneurs, investors and high-skill employees in tech and finance, while the downside is concentrated with low-skill workers whose jobs are offshored to lower wage countries.

This is true only if we impose barriers to geographic mobility, which we do via artificial scarcity of housing in our major cities.

If we produced housing like we did cars, all the "low-skill" people would be able to move to the city and find a job in the many other services that require human labor.

> the government to lower the cost of high-quality education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.

We don't need more high-quality education nor do we need to onshore. We need to deregulate the housing market, we make it easier to migrate to the US (funny enough, yes that would help with inequality). And I do agree we need better social systems.

There is no way to frame this admin's policies that makes it look reasonable. It's a Crony Clown Club show.

> The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole, but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.

Like... Scandinavia?

what you're saying in short is that the US economy has changed from Manufacture-based to Service-based, just like China.

People don't realize this but China is moving toward Service-based, naturally, as they raised their standard of living, thus education.

What's missing is not raising tax on Income but taxing Wealth: the super rich has their wealth sitting and growing unproductively (house appreciating is not productive, buying farm lands and rent it to other farmer isn't productive). Holding Limited version of a Ferrari isn't productive. Feel free to find other Assets.

Once the super rich completed their journey in this world, they will inherit billions to their kids, whose productivity output does not match the wealth they inherited, again, not productive.

Tax their Wealth.

> It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to the US economy as a whole, particularly with the USD being the reserve currency.

It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to large cap U.S. companies and their shareholders.

If you are U.S. worker without a lot of equity in the market all you notice is that your job gets outsourced.

> The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole, but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.

You are assuming that this administration has the same goals as you, just different ("foolish") methods of arriving there. I'd posit that they have very different goals that these methods are solving for.

This is a regressive tax that hurts low skill and low wage workers proportionately more since basic necessities of life are going to increase in price - it will be a much larger share of wallet than rich. This will not materially change purchasing behavior of very rich (save maybe waiting to buy a car due to increased pricecs)

It would be beneficial to increase taxes on the massive service economy and use the proceeds to subsidize lower wage industries.

In trumps first term after tariffs affected farmers, they had to subisidize them to keep them afloat. It didn't quite work the way it was intended. The trade war relief program in the first term spent $30bn keeping farmers afloat.

As a highly skilled and comparatively highly paid worker, I feel it is outrageous to suggest that I am within the class that needs to give up any reputed "wealth" when I am nowhere near the 1% who hold more than 50% of it. Such a claim just contributes to the wealth making of the 1% misers even more. Class warfare! I have already had to give up significant amounts of college and retirement savings from these tariffs.

You're arguing from a steady state. In point of fact the pain of the at-this-point-seemingly-inevitable recession is absolutely going to be concentrated on the working class. Those of us with savings and work flexibility will do just fine.

Even someone making a first principles argument for a revision of US trade policy should agree that this is insane.

> The obvious solution is... for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education

Not everyone is smart enough to land in the professional class. The US does its young population an enormous disservice by pushing low academic performers to go to college. There needs to be, somehow, a way for people to make a living with their hands, because for some people, that is genuinely all they are capable of.

> ... build out social systems...

The way you build out the social system is by enabling people in the working class to find genuine work that produces value, not some ditch-digging make-work government program. You don't take those jobs away by offshoring them.

I'm not saying I'm against offshoring in general or that I support Trump's tariffs - I don't. But it's not exactly controversial to point out that, since the end of the Cold War, the US prioritized the recommendations of economists over social cohesion and socially harmonious policy. A lot of people were thrown out of work and were left to fend for themselves. Many of them ended up as victims of the opioid epidemic. I'm not convinced that the prior system was completely peaches as cream.

> As such, this administration's policies are foolish, but many on this very site would need to give up a little bit of their privilege to reduce the pain felt by many of their fellow citizens.

Very few people who work as full-time devs are so wealthy that they are totally insulated from general social decline.

Thanks for your comment, it explains why there seems to be a high degree of support for these measures in some quarters (was looking at the youtube comments to the liberation day speech) vs the consensus here at HN.

Let's suppose these policies are to the benefit of some Americans over other the benefit of other Americans. The open question now is: does it matter? does it really have an influence on the gross profit numbers? Will an isolationist foreign policy destroy the international order and how could this effect the US in return?

Tariffs will probably be bad, but on the other hand the old system didn't really work either in the long run. Perhaps he can bring some manufacturing back and I don't really believe consumer goods getting more expensive will be immediately felt. Could be wrong though.

Well, at least it might get interesting if you like crazy. I don't really believe those crying the loudest that they are particularly interested in combating inequality or are too interested in protecting low income people. Yes, maybe they need industries protected by tarrifs instead of cheap t-shirts. Maybe this perspective is rather stupid though. We will find out if that works or not. Economics projecting the next depression aren't really sources to trust either.

> The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole, but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education

I'm always skeptical of the idea that we can just educate ourselves out of problems.

As I see it, that would only raise people's wage expectations which would make us even less competitive on a global market?

The need for blue collar workers doesn't just evaporate, and there's frankly only a finite demand for white collar workers. You give everyone expectations of a white collar job, and they end up working blue collar because there's no job for them, you're just setting society up for mass disappointment and resentment.

You give your average blue collar worker today a degree, are they actually more valuable to their current position? Probably not.

Your problem statement is missing "national security" angle. As I understand the current administration sees US de-industrialization as a threat to it and tariffs as a soution.

Yes! I've been consistently frustrated at both sides of the issue. It became salient for me when I read about how China had sanctioned three American drone manufacturers that were supplying Ukraine last year, and how it disrupted their supply chains and ultimately the war effort.

It is unacceptable for any other country to be able to do this to any part of the western-aligned military supply chain.

We needed a targeted policy -- I don't care about American cars except to the extent that those factories can be converted to aircraft and tank factories.

But the conversation has been frustratingly reduced to 'reshore low skill work' vs 'save my infinite trough of cheap plastic slop'.

I don't want to hear about tariffs bad, I want to hear about how subsidies are better or about how it doesn't matter anyway because of the structure of the Chinese economy (I saw it claimed without evidence that they depend on imports from places aligned with the west which is reassuring if substantiated).

There's an underlying issue everyone is dancing around.

You can’t make everyone above average.

> The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole, but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.

You're proposing to tax an international supply chain. To tax something it has to be in your jurisdiction to begin with, and then you have several problems.

The most obvious of these is, what happens when the stuff just isn't there anymore? Suppose the US isn't competitive with China for manufacturing certain goods, e.g. because the US has a higher cost of living as a result of a purposeful housing shortage and then has higher labor costs, or for any other reason. So manufacturing moves to China, not just to sell to the US but also to sell to the domestic market in China and to Europe and India and the rest of the world. No part of those other transactions is in the US, so the US can't tax them and use the money to help the people in the US who used to be doing that manufacturing and selling those products to the rest of the world. Whereas if you sustain domestic manufacturing through some means then it exists and can make products to sell to the rest of the world because the fixed costs of establishing a manufacturing base can be covered by the domestic market and then it only has to compete in the international market on the basis of variable costs.

Next consider the industries where the US still makes stuff. You could tax those things because they're still in the US. But that makes the US less competitive in the global market for investment capital, which is highly mobile. If higher US taxes cause returns to be lower in the US than they are in other countries then investors go invest in the other countries instead, and then the thing stops being in the US. So that doesn't really work. You can see this in the case of e.g. Europe, which has even worse problems with the loss of manufacturing than the US.

Which leaves the activity where it's the other half of the transaction happening in the US, i.e. China is manufacturing something but the customer is in the US. That you could tax without a huge risk of capital flight, because companies can rarely change the location of their customers, but that still leaves you with two problems.

First, either of the countries participating in the transaction could levy the tax. In the case of China, then they can levy a tax (or some tax-equivalent) to only such an extent that it consumes the surplus in the transaction attributable to the competitive advantage of their country. China can do this because they have a lower cost of living etc., which doesn't work for the US. But because they do that, the US can't tax that portion of the surplus, which was the gain from moving manufacturing to China.

And second, a tax on imports is called a tariff. Which the US can impose to tax that portion of the transaction surplus that isn't attributable to the foreign country's cost advantage, i.e. the preexisting transaction surplus where it costs $8 to make something someone is willing to pay $10 for regardless of where it was made. But tariffs are the thing you don't like.

I mean , if money is going to go to the rich.

There is a simple mechanism to distribute the money from the rich back to middle class / poor.

Its called taxes.

Basically, Trump shouldn't have done tariff and instead just taxed the rich after a certain point.

Oh wait, I think that sounds familiar.

Of course I am not saying tax them 90% and of course, you might say that there are loopholes. How are we going to distribute money from stocks? And you are right. But the thing trump is doing isn't working or maybe its working as intended by trump being a chatgpt wrapper.

If even trump literally just sat and did nothing, it would have been more beneficial.

I mean, Europe also has a high tax rate, its not that bad to have a high tax rate if you genuinely want equality, though I presume nobody really wants that. And Lobbying is legal in america which really shocks me.

I had said it time and time again. Trust is like a glass ball,once broken it can't be recovered. I feel like people are however still in shock of that glass ball being fallen and are in disbelief, But you guys gotta know whom y'all elected is doing harm.

Polymarket and even goldman sachs etc. are predicting 60% chance of US recession

> for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education

Devils advocate point, and one nobody wants to talk about: what if everyone can't be a high-skill employee?

Imagine if the highest earning jobs required immense physical endurance and strength. Nobody would argue that everyone can do that. It would be obvious that only a subset of people are capable of doing those jobs. For some reason, with intellectual labor, we are able to pretend that there is no threshold and everyone can do it. It's an idea that makes people feel good but what if it's just not true? Can everyone be made above average in something with enough education?

If we're creating an economy where decent jobs only exist for people in the top ~20% of the ability curve, how do we handle that? How do we maintain a democracy? Sometimes people float the idea of UBI, but that could turn out extremely dystopian with a huge underclass of UBI-collecting people in a state of hopelessness and boredom. That doesn't work much better for democracy than a huge underclass of under-employed and unemployed people.

To make matters worse: the fact that our past strategy works so well for increasing GDP means it it tends to inflate assets, including things like housing prices. The end result is a country that looks, to more than half its inhabitants, like a vacation town where outside capital inflates the cost of everything way above what local wages can support. It might not be a coincidence that San Francisco, New York, and other capitals of high margin high skill industries have real estate prices that lock ordinary people out of even "starter homes."

I absolutely do not support Trump's execution here -- it's ham-fisted, reckless, and badly thought out. If we are exiting this neoliberal model, Trump's exit from it is a little bit like Biden's exit from Afghanistan. Still it is obvious to me that the current system is not working for more than half of Americans. It's fantastic for the top ~20% or so and leaves everyone else behind.

We can't keep doing that if we want a democracy. If we exclude 50-80% of the population from anything meaningful or any economic stability, we will get one of two things. Either we'll get the kind of totalitarian state that is required to maintain that kind of inequality in perpetuity, or we will get a string of revolutions or a failed state. People will not just sit around in hopelessness forever. Eventually they will be recruited by demagogues. Ironically Trump has been one of the most effective at this. I'm sure more will eventually show up though. There's a big market for them.

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Nope. It's true that free trade WAS hugely beneficial to the US economy as a whole. Now free trade is hurting USA economy and that's why USA play against the rules they were promoting for so long.

> lower the cost of high-quality education

And how do you propose we do that? By giving schools even more money at taxpayer's expense?

> raising taxes at the high end

40.1% of US taxpayers on the low end of income distribution pay no income tax, 16.5% pay neither income nor payroll taxes. Top 1% pays 40.4% of all income tax (while holding about 30.8% of net worth, 13.8% of the total is held by top 0.1%). Top 1% (with the possible exception of a few billionaires) already pays through their nose.

this glib analysis neglects the part where decades of plans and budgets have been addressing " build out social systems" while simultaneously building crony networks of political appointees, guarding the hen house. Short term pain is loudly announced for the purpose of defeating the political opponent, not addressing the long standing inefficiencies in a swollen and obese wealth exchange centered in the USA.

tons of cynical one-liners from partisans drown out efforts to really examine the impacts over medium and long term. A horrible problem with this move is that it is not entirely wrong from a fundamentals point of view? It certainly creates winners and losers, no question about it.

So basically: the solution is "do more of the same".

I suppose that's the point, people were tired of hearing the same old crap by leftists who fancy themselves as smarter, as their quality of life continued to drop, so they figured "screw it let's try the opposite".

Guess we'll see where it lands.

The deficit is 2 trillion.

Income taxes on individuals are 2.4 trillion.

How much do you expect to raise taxes to cover that gap? You double my taxes and I’m in the welfare line.

Further, and this is not referenced enough - the US must rollover ~9 trillion in treasuries this year. The lower the interest rate to do that, the better. Otherwise it increase the deficit even more.

The only way this ends is one of two paths - a path similar to what we are on; default.

We may not like this one, but default is world destroying because of the broad use of the Dollar around the globe.

> This is why in some European countries, that $1 item from China with free shipping can end up costing $10, because you're paying $0.25 in VAT or import taxes, and $10 to the shipping courier for doing the paperwork.

Not the big China exporters, not any more. They all include taxes in the price on your country specific web site, ship to their warehouses inside the EU, handle taxes and your local courier just delivers.

Now if you're talking DHL yes, they have you fill forms upon forms and charge you for the forms you didn't ask for. But if that happens, no one will have time to process all the forms so private imports from China will simply ... halt for a while. Until Temu/AliExpress/etc sort out for the US the same system they use in the EU.

If in the US, I'd hold on any direct purchases from China for 3-6 months.

> So it is even worse, you either pay $25 per shipment, or 30% - whichever is higher. Then later it moves up to $50 per shipment, or 30% - whichever is higher.

Hah. That's DHL commission territory :) Definitely hold from direct purchases until Temu sorts it out for you.

I suspect that this $25/50 per item policy is to prevent people from claiming a lower value than the actual price of the item. I've received international packages marked "gift" with a value of $10 that I had paid much more for.

I doubt the US will even manufacture substitutes for most of the things I liked and ordered from AliExpress. People with hobbies primarily supplied by Chinese manufacturing (like mine- electronics, 3D printing, FPV drones) are just going to be paying more for the same thing. There's no way we'll get an American substitute for niche products- all the US chip fabs are going to be filled with orders for higher dollar parts.

Note that the fact sheet says per item, not per shipment. So there doesn't even seem to be a way to make one big purchase of several items to pay a single fee. They will hit you for every item in the shipment.

Quick edit: I also note that the fact sheet makes a distinction between things sent through international post vs. other means. If you send via UPS/FedEx/DHL there will be regular customs fees (34%?), and through post you will have the $25/50 per item fee. So I will definitely have to pay attention to the shipping method for anything bought from AliExpress from now on.

Quick edit 2: I literally have a PicoCalc from ClockworkPi coming in the mail in a few days- I guess we'll see if DHL charges me any extra fees.

Great. AliExpress was the RadioShack of 2025. No way I’m spending $25+ for a strip of SMD resistors, and I expect to never see them available in the US at a price that makes sense as a hobbyist. This isn’t helping anyone, will prevent a lot of prototyping, and just be a bad experience in life. Thanks for ruining the fun of the last 5-10 years of DIY electronics golden age.

I had plans to build some animatronic Halloween decorations for this year over the summer. I’m not going to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on parts that nominally cost less than $50.

My own pain is minor though compared to everyone I know who uses Temu and other things to basically outfit their life. This will be insanely regressive as they have the least to spend on “on brand” products, which themselves are imported too. This is like “super sales tax for the poor.” Me, I’ll just save my money and wait for the next president to undo the mess. My buddies not as successful monetarily as me? Their quality is life is going down the drain.

De minimis exemption expiring has been a planned thing for years through administrations of both parties. Trump admin has been delaying the already planned expiration during the Biden years to use as a negotiating carrot.

Basically it just means Temu/Aliexpress/Etc. will ship their goods to the US in bulk instead of bypassing customs on individual small orders, and distribute from domestic warehouses, having to now compete with US producers who do the same thing.

It does completely kill any business built on dropshipping individual orders from chinese factories without ever touching inventory however.

In Europe, Alibaba has their own warehouse in the Netherlands. I wonder if that's to be able to do a single "international" import. Could the same happen in the US?

FWIW eliminating the de minimis exemption had already been proposed by President Biden late last year:

https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statement...

Courier will only pay the tax if it's a DDP solution, and then bill it back to the actual merchant. FedEx, DHL, and UPS provide this as an option. If it goes USPS, or no DDP solution is in place, it's going DDU and it will simply be stuck in a sufferance warehouse or at the local post office until the recipient comes in and pays the bill.

I think price uncertainty is already hitting eBay. A few days ago I looked at the price of cheap musical instruments (a student violin and a trumpet that each cost $25 several years ago) and the low price is now $129. Some things seem to have disappeared almost entirely from eBay (most small portable ozone generators). Maybe this is temporary until sellers figure it all out.

>> If that is the case in the US, I fully expect total chaos and mayhem when all the Temu / AliExpress/ Wish customers start receiving extra bills for their orders.

All three of those stores are very popular in my part of Europe. So there must be some workaround. Based on your edit I would guess that they would import a bunch of orders in one shipment to make the 'per shipment' charge small per item/order.

Sounds like a good idea, but how are they actually going to implement and enforce that?

Do they open every package? What stops Temu or whatever from just keep sending them? I mean drugs get through so ..

I had not heard about the de minimis removal. That would be crazy. I assume that would be the end of every dollar store in the country right?

crazy thought, maybe a $1 item shouldn’t be shipped from overseas at great expense to the environment? 5 years ago all anybody would talk about is the environment and now people are burning down EVs and complaining that they’ll have to pay more for a cheap $1 shirt they don’t need to be moved 6000 or more miles? make this make sense.

>> If that is the case in the US, I fully expect total chaos and mayhem when all the Temu / AliExpress/ Wish customers start receiving extra bills for their orders.

All three of those stores are very popular in my part of Europe. So there must be some workaround.

Well, the good news is almost nobody is gonna like this, so I don't anticipate it lasting beyond Trump's presidency, assuming he makes it 4 years at this rate. The bad news is that even after tariffs are removed, it will take years for prices to recover, if they ever do.

Many of extra bills are absolutely not going to get paid.

So is AMZN stock up?

Here's a much more detailed analysis of the effects of the executive order: https://chatgpt.com/share/67ee10c6-4690-8006-83d7-8e9b22bccf...

The practical takeaway is that the average household will spend $3,500-4,000 more as a result of the tariffs. Clothes, furniture, toys will be about 30% more expensive, electronics will be about 25% more expensive, tires and jewelry about 15% more expensive, and industrial buyers are going to get hosed when they buy equipment.

There were major carve-outs for the auto industry (yay Michigan) and petrochemical industries (yay Gulf Coast); they’ll still get hosed on equipment but will mostly escape increases in cost of materials. Imported cars/trucks aren’t directly affected either.

------------------------------------

Meta discussion:

I can't do an analysis on the de minimis situation, I don't know of any public datasets that would allow such an analysis, and it's obvious that it will have extremely complex effects (and therefore, any first-order analysis would be very low-quality).

Note on ChatGPT-4.5 "Deep Research": I spot-checked the calculations for HS codes using my own research and the numbers seemed reasonably close to my own. https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/explore/treemap is an invaluable resource for this kind of analysis. ChatGPT fumbled the bag on HS 30: Pharmaceutical products, by not excluding products listed in Annex II, which overestimated total tariffs by about 6% ($30 billion), but the net effect on households is still in the right ballpark (+/- 20%).

Edit: This isn't one of those simple low-effort posts that say "omg look what ChatGPT said". I'm capable of doing this analysis on my own, and I checked ChatGPT's work for the largest contributing categories of goods. Sometimes we disagreed by 10% or so, but overall the results checked out except for Pharmaceuticals, which I caught and didn't repeat misinformation in my "practical effects" tl;dr. The only way it is significantly wrong is if both myself and ChatGPT missed some large tariff category and assumed it was small - that could raise the real costs above the numbers in the analysis - but I checked all the largest categories that ChatGPT identified as well as all the largest categories from our largest trade partners shown by the Atlas of Economic Complexity, so it's somewhat unlikely that happened.

I purposefully didn't include 2nd and 3rd order effects (e.g. chained CPI) because they are usually relatively small, massively uncertain (my analysis would be worth as much as dog poop on a shoe) and those higher-order effects take too long to manifest. It's not worth predicting costs out 2+ years because the political environment is far too unstable. Just today, the U.S. Senate voted to block all the Canadian tariffs and end the "state-of-emergency" that this executive order is standing on. Front-page diplomacy or private back-room deals could make Trump adjust tariffs up or down on various nations multiple times this year. Who knows what the situation will be 6 months from now, let alone 5 years from now when global supply chains and pricing elasticity might re-normalize. The fact that ChatGPT didn't include these effects is a point in its favor, not a glaring oversight.

I'm not complaining about downvotes but if you are downvoting this, please let me know why so that I can improve. I put a lot of work into this far beyond just typing some crap into ChatGPT and I think these numbers add a lot to the discussion.

> This is why in some European countries, that $1 item from China with free shipping can end up costing $10

This is what strikes me about these new tariffs... for all the concern about how it's going to impact the US economy (and I don't doubt it will), this is STILL far, far, less protectionism than literally every other country in the entire world. Donald Trump's justification for all this is that the U.S. is propping up the entire world economy to it's own detriment, and I'm not sure he's necessarily wrong here.

The bit I love is that countries with which the US has a trade surplus aren't getting the opposite of a tariff (a grant, I guess) on their imports to the US, they aren't getting zero tariffs on their imports to the US, they're getting 10% tariffs.

It's even worse, they literally got their formula from a llm model (probably Grok?) => https://bsky.app/profile/dansinker.com/post/3llunnyfeoj2v

"To calculate reciprocal tariffs, import and export data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2024. Parameter values for ε and φ were selected. The price elasticity of import demand, ε, was set at 4.

Recent evidence suggests the elasticity is near 2 in the long run (Boehm et al., 2023), but estimates of the elasticity vary. To be conservative, studies that find higher elasticities near 3-4 were drawn on. The elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, φ, is 0.25."[0]

[0] https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations

Are we factoring in digital/service trades? For example, Netflix is in Vietnam. There are many Netflix subscribers in Vietnam. Does that get factored into the trade deficit? Or is it only physical goods that get factored in?

Vietnam uses many US services such as Microsoft Office, Netflix, ChatGPT, Facebook ads, etc. This is revenue that directly go into the pockets of American companies.

There is a dedicated article in an Austrian newspaper about that: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000264129/das-verrueckt... They essentially call it batshit crazy.

Funny how Russia is absent from the list

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

I see how the tariff numbers may have been calculated. But why is it done that way? What is the rationale behind such a calculation? Is this a way to balance the existing trade deficits? How does it work?

Would appreciate you (or anybody else) shed some light on the economics of the thing.

lol when I saw him hold up his piece of cardboard I thought, “yeah that’s definitely random numbers he invented 2 hours ago”

Does this mean that software worldwide gets a boon since:

1. It’s not affected by these tariffs 2. It wasn’t used as a basis for the calculation

Here's the official source for the calculation: [0].

Also, there are some hints this might be from a LLM [1].

And an official statement that it's about trade imbalances and not reciproc tarrifs [2].

And they ask the affected country to "not retaliate" [3].

IMHO Trump tries to lead the US like he managed his businesses. And here I'd like to refer to the three casinos he owned that are now insolvent [4].

[0] https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114272481124239587

[1] https://universeodon.com/@henryk@chaos.social/11427313249281...

[2] https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations

[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/02/business/liberation-day-t...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atl...

What’s the actual tariffs other countries are charging the US then?

Thank you for posting this, the misinformation is clear as day. But lying is without consequences if people are dumb or lethargic enough, it seems.

This will get very interesting.

Interesting. While I think these tariffs are a bad idea, I'm not qualified to fully pass judgement. However, knowing Trump, when I saw the numbers I instantly suspected they would be wrong.

If Jan 6th didn't dissuade people, I don't think anything will.

Additionally, his base will not blame him, they will swallow whichever of the many narratives the propagandists are currently cooking up that suites their fancy.

> There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.

Is that because we can't grow olives here, or because we don't have federal subsidies propping up a domestic olive industry that can compete with corn and soy?

I ready don't know the details well enough there, but it feels like this could just be selection bias at play.

US does produce olive oil, particularly in states like California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Oregon, and Hawaii. So you do have a few options:

  1. Support local producers. There are high-quality olive oils made right here in the US that might surprise you.
  2. Work with Tunisia manufacturers to move their production to the US
  3. If you don't want to support local producers, pay extra and enjoy your Tunisia olive oil as much as you want
  4. If politics is the real issue for you, move to Tunisia, there is no "orange man" there

You are right about olive oil. So why did he do it? The trade imbalance with Tunisia. Why is there are trade imbalance with Tunisia? US consumers have money to buy products from Tunisia, Tunisian consumers don't have the ability to afford products from the US. Why can't Tunisian's afford US products? This is the central question for every country in the trade war and it has myriad factors, but two of the biggest are: A higher cost US dollar, suppression of wages in countries like Tunisia (and Germany, and China, etc).

Tunisian here. Tunisians on social media are baffled/amused because olive oil is basically the only product imported by the US.

So, we can and do grow olives here in California, but it is a very small industry compared Spain, Italy, etc.

However, one thing we absolutely cannot grow here in any sort of money-making way, is coffee. So 32% tariffs on imports of coffee from Indonesia.... when we do not even export coffee.

California produces very high quality olive oil. I buy it at Costco. The Kirkland brand likely comes from outside the country.

Maybe we can make British olive oil by getting Tunisian olive oil and putting it in a British bottle? Then it's only 10%.

The whole thing is kind of nuts.

We get a lot of titanium from China. That's because the largest natural Ti deposits are in Eurasia. That is due to geology, not politics, and now US companies who need it (read: high performance transport, medical products) will pay substantially more for it.

The US has a trade surplus with the UK, and the UK got a 10% tariff :-) Who's ripping off who?

>> There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.

I'm not sure this is true. I buy olive oil specifically from California. It's niche but could be larger if they weren't competing with lower overseas labor costs.

Olive oil, coffee, chocolate, vanilla, tea, lots of fruits, sugar. These will all be massively stressed.

According to Trump Tunisia has to buy olive oil from you for the same amount of money that you spent on Tunisias olive oil. Otherwise one side has a trade deficit and that's unfair!

I would happily pay 38% extra for high quality Tunisian olive oil, it is already super undervalued because it's reputation is lower than it should be.

It's gotten so bad that Tunisian olives are shipped to Italy, pressed into oil, and labelled as Italian Olive oil.

His approval numbers will decrease 20-30% over the next few months. Only the most cultish cultists will stick with him when inflation spikes to 15%.

I think you started to form a persuasive argument, but you discredit yourself by saying "orange man".

There are small olive oil producers in the US. Do they see this as a good thing?

> what strikes me as particularly insane is how it’s not even defensible as a protective measure

You must not have read many of the comments here. Way too many people are trying to defend this just because they don't want to have to admit that they were wrong on Trump being better for the economy.

Why do you think it's a good idea to buy olive oil from Tunisia instead of from California? Are you aware of how much CO2 is released to ship a trivial commodity across the atlantic ocean?

> There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.

You should be using America corn oil. /s

[dead]

No offense, but the benefits may outweigh problems like getting your favorite Tunisian olive oil.

The orange man is saying: "Looks like you are sending a lot of $$$ to those olive oil farmers in Tunisia. With my tariffs you now have two choices at your disposal: either you keep buying their Olive oil but then you are going to have to give me $$$ as well to pay for our national debt. You are going to buy less of it; and help your country in the process. Alternatively, you can decide that maybe you don't need olive oil all that much. We have this amazing product called 'corn oil' which is produced locally and is now comparatively less expensive, buy that instead and support your local farmer. Choice is yours".

Maybe you don't like either of these choices; but at the same time; saying "I believe that having cheap access to product produced halfway across the globe is a god given right to American people; how dare you imposing me to make such a choice" is part of the reason why we need 13 earth to sustain the modern US lifestyle.

I am really not a Trump supporter at all. But at the same time the gradual reduction of tariffs has been a key factor of increasing global trade; which in turn is a key component of the increase of CO2 emissions. Finding a way to dampen a bit the international component and making sure that locally sourced products and services are not affected seems not that bad.

IMHO the idea is that they are ready to accept the suffering of Tunisian oil lovers for the greater good, which is the empowerment of certain type of people like them.

It's basically Europe but hundred or more years ago.

> My favorite everyday olive oil comes from Tunisia. They now have a 38% tariff on them.

"Silver lining:" there's a good chance that oil was either rancid or doesn't pass basic quality tests for the "extra-virgin" part:

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/imported-olive-oil-quality-unre...

The COOC web site lists California olive oils that they've certified. Last time I checked California Gold Olive Oil was certified, and they even sell it in half and full gallons. That's just one I've tried and liked-- there are a bunch of others listed on the COOC web site. (Edit: there are probably certification trade associations for other countries/regions, COOC is just the one I'm familiar with.)

This is precisely the problem.

Plus, even assuming there existed lots of people to fill the gap, why would they sign up for manufacturing jobs? They pay like crap. Unions and worker rights have been gradually chipped away at for years and now they're straight up chainsawing them. Why work a monotonous job that pays at or just slightly above minimum wage, has skills that aren't really transferable should you decide to change careers, is rough on the body and doesn't even provide proper health care or sick days to rest, and employers will call you in during natural disasters with the threat of firing you otherwise and then leave you to literally die while pretending it's not their fault when you do die? [1]

It's companies and the government saying, "We want everything, and in exchange, we'll give you nothing. And you will be happy." No American sees their kid growing up and thinks, "I hope my child will one day work long hours at a factory." People in some countries do, and it's because those jobs are a step up from the current standard. Factory jobs in the US are, in many cases, a step down and that step keeps lowering. High tech/high skilled manufacturing can be an exception, but the bulk of the jobs they're hoping to bring back aren't that.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/02/g-s1-28731/hurricane-helene-t...

I heard a great story from a colleague that worked in fashion development in the UK. There's a big push for "Made in the UK" clothing and consumers associate it with quality, but the items are lower quality, because the UK lost its garment manufacturing skills 50+ years ago. Meanwhile Asia has gained those skills, so if you buy clothes from China they are likely higher quality than you'd get here and cheaper.

This is not always the case, Italy still makes high quality leather goods, Portugal is still making good shirts and trousers etc, but for the most part as economies have moved away from manufacturing into services they have lost the skills and to force manufacturing to happen there means accepting higher priced, lower quality products.

I don't know that I agree with this. The US is too large a market to ignore, and this is effectively raising the profit margin for local production. Foreign companies will either move some portion of manufacturing to the US (for the domestic market), or cede the market completely, and I don't know that they're prepared to do that (well, maybe Chinese ones are). Factories have a long lead time, so even if this is abolished at the end of his term, they'll be locked in with sunk capital costs. The main reasons not to do this are a) abandoning the market, as mentioned, or b) you think you can hold out long enough until the political landscape changes.

If the people aren't there, wages will rise until they show up. Most labor shortages aren't an actual shortage of labor, unless you genuinely can't produce that skillset domestically, or your labor market is so tight that no one is unemployed; rather, they're a shortage of wages. Pay enough, and someone will do the job. This is especially true for low-skilled work. There is not, and never will be, a shortage of cleaners, for example, because anyone can do it, so as long as there are unemployed people and the wages are good enough, someone will do the work.

And even if these jobs aren't in running these factories, they've still got to be built. Money is a powerful motivator, so I have no doubt they will. Companies will bleed because of this, but there are clear benefits for the US working class even if they're paying more. The gamble is obviously that the benefits outweigh the negatives of higher prices overall. Modern economics says no, but modern economics also believes in service-based economies, and that countries should only produce what they're good at, which, eventually, becomes a repudiation of the nation state. No country wants to buy bullets from an enemy, even if they're cheaper, and the web of infrastructure and industry necessary to maintain a defense industry mandates that at some point, you abandon the theory. Which is to say: I don't know, but I'm also skeptical that economists do.

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing

The core issue is that, historically, experienced workers have passed down their knowledge to new generations, ensuring a steady accumulation of expertise. However, when factories close and seasoned workers retire or move to other fields without training successors, a vast amount of valuable knowledge is lost. Rebuilding this expertise is both difficult and time-consuming. Subsidies will be required to support local production - initially yielding lower-quality or significantly more expensive goods - until the Western world relearns how to manufacture at scale.

Furthermore, if you want to build something, you likely won’t do it by hand. You’ll need machines to automate the process or enable complex material operations. Rebuilding this capability from scratch will take time, as existing manufacturers lack the necessary capacity. Additionally, similar equipment is produced much more cheaply in China, creating another challenge that must be addressed. What’s likely to happen is that Chinese manufacturers will establish companies in the United States that replicate their production facilities elsewhere (e.g. mainland China). They’ll ship in parts, and final assembly will take place in the U.S. This approach allows them to bypass trade restrictions while maintaining cost advantages. I already know of several cases where this is happening.

No people, no supply chain, and no total lack of environmental regulations mean most manufacturing jobs are not coming back no matter what the tariffs are. It's not just one reason that the manufacturing jobs have left, but a conflation of reasons.

Unless… well, unless you eliminate the EPA, invade Canada and Greenland and take their raw materials, and make people so poor that they take up factory jobs again.

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing.

A usual lack of high qualified low paid workers?

didnt you listen to the 70 year olds planning this? we're just going have the robots do it.

you know how people said putin was surrounded by an echo chamber and thats how he got stuck in ukraine? Thats the us now but with billionare VC's and 2nd tier 1980's NYC real estate developers. Look at their numbers and listen to them talk, they're genuinely not grounded in reality as whole group and theres no fixing that

This is basic economics that the administration refuses to understand.

Trade allows you to consume beyond your nation’s manpower and resource constraints.

And it’s even stupider when you’re putting tariffs on raw materials like Canadian lumber. So not only do we need to magically find millions of workers to work in these new factories we also need to find a bunch of lumberjacks and start cutting down our own trees? We’re at 4% unemployment, who’s going to do this work?

We literally don’t have the people to make this work.

Well they can always go back to child labor like Florida is planning to - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-child-labor-...

Suppose you even find those workers. How are american products going to compete with cheaper chinese / european ones. People over there are used to much lower wages / purchasing power. You can look at Tesla vs BYD prices as an example

I recently listened to an episode of the Search Engine podcast where they showed how hard it is to manufacture something completely in the USA: https://www.searchengine.show/listen/search-engine-1/the-puz...

(Spoilers, the problem they had was that even when they found companies to manufacture their bbq scrubber, it was harder to find someone in the USA to make the parts that are used to make the parts.)

Manufacturing pays very little, and for good reason.

You are competing with sometimes slave labor in other countries. Countries with no environmental protections and with no labor laws or concern for safety.

Imagine you could open a factory in country A or B, but country B's labor and employment law makes your production cost 30% less. You'd be an idiot, and more importantly you would lose in the market if you chose country A.

But you slap a tariff on, then it changes the dynamics. It makes the higher pay and labor costs more palatable in country A.

The usA has gotten itself in a pickle. It advanced worker rights and minimum wages to the point that shipping their work overseas to countries that don't care about such things is the only rational choice.

Perhaps if pay rates go up by some percentage to bring them out of their self isolation, then this will be resolved.

In real life, people are spending years looking for jobs making enough to barely survive. I should tell them about your video you saw, if only they know.

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing

I am willing to move anywhere in the US to do any manufacturing job if it means that I will be paid enough to afford a house with two bedrooms and basic living expenses. I have a bachelor's degree and have been unable to find such an arrangement. So where exactly are all of these unfilled jobs that you speak of? Are they unfilled because we don't have the people, or because they're trying to pay in peanuts? Unfilled because we don't have the people, or because HR departments are filtering away qualified resumes based on voodoo? This outlandish claim you're making that we don't want to work is offensive to a lot of people who are aware of their own existence and know that you're spouting bullshit to trick people into more wealth inequality.

Your 7 million young men aren't 'missing', you're just refusing to hire them. The jobs don't exist.

Eh. This always gets presented as a, "Why don't Millennial/Zoomer/Alpha men want to work?" Lack of training? Maybe. But I see that as more of a subset of the actual issue, which is two-fold: work conditions and compensation. So many jobs suck, and pay less than they should, and provide no real opportunity for growth. Let's break it down:

Jobs that suck: bad hours, bad bosses, bad processes that create inefficiency and stress.

Jobs that don't pay: can't afford a house, can't afford to date/get married/have children, can't establish a stable lifestyle .

Jobs that don't allow for growth: masters don't pass along their skills, managers don't promote (and, eventually, step aside), employers push employees out with stagnation and the hoarding of opportunities for nepo-hires or outsiders.

And why are we in this situation? Essentially, because someone likes the way things are. Managers and seniors don't want to change their work styles, even if those styles are dysfunctional. Employers don't want to pay. Older workers don't want to leave, or jeopardize their marketability by training juniors.

Every young worker can tell you about their experiences with older workers who promise to train and won't, managers who promise advancement and don't, having to be in the office at an ungodly hour or the warehouse or factory late into the night. And for what? Nothing of the American Dream, at least without putting up with the more ridiculous end of the job spectrum, or having been born into money, or having been lucky enough to rub shoulders with someone born into money.

It's Japan's hikikomori problem, transposed. Japanese authorities constantly blame the shut-ins, but outside observers recognize that the problem actually lies with the "functional" side of society, and its unwillingness to confront the way it alienates and produces perfectly reasonable, if dysfunctional, responses in these men (and women).

Can you blame the new generations for not wanting to work their asses off doing arduous manual labor, payed a minimum wage that is barely enough to afford a single room?

Republicans made work awful. I've heard some wanting to get rid of minimum wage too. Do you think this will help?

> sectors like the military, construction and the automotive industry each have 100K+ positions that they are unable to fill. A return to manufacturing adds to that shortage.

Feel free to offer higher wages than the previous stagnant wages.

What's up with the corresponding 7 million young women of working age?

Agreed, the root of the problem is that America has relatively zero modern manufacturing infrastructure and manpower, especially compared to China. Those MAGA folks just don't know this. Offshoring happened not just because of cheaper price; China already had a much better environment even 20 years ago thanks to billions of people.

> Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions.

perhaps we'll see something akin to "forced conscription", except for industrial work

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing ... I'm sure you'll have Apple investing in a mega plant where 50 educated people push some buttons though.

I feel like this could be used to steel-man the Trump administration's plan, though, should you want to. The best-case outcome here for America is it forces large capital investment in automated manufacturing facilities based in the US by making manufacturing that relies on cheap overseas labour expensive enough that the investment is worth it.

I'm doubtful, but, in the unlikely event it works like that, and this comes online in the next couple of years without causing a catastrophic wipeout in the mid-terms, Trump will look like a genius.

IMO it would have been much smarter to explicitly incentivize this with tax breaks and start with small tariffs that would ramp up a little bit each month, if it's the plan, and not just incoherent policy making.

>Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions.

And you never wondered why that is?

If there was a real labor demand shortage wouldn't there be actual wage growth though ?

Actually there are people who are ok to do physical jobs but they are getting deported now.

Good thing we're deporting so many people then.

If this is true, why are US wages stagnating?

No one will want to do lower income jobs while the cost of living is high and continues to rise. Wear and tear on the body is also not compensated, not to mention healthcare being expensive. Meanwhile, I do CRUD apps and work remotely 20/hours a week with no bodily harm (on the contrary, I have time to work out and make bad posts on HN)

No one in their right mind is going to choose manufacturing over what I have if they can do both, and most people could honestly learn to do CRUD apps. Even if my salary were to go down by 5-10% yoy due to people moving in, I'm still in a better position for the other reasons mentioned. I'd have to be below manufacturing and blue collar wages to get me to switch.

The only sensible explanation is that they're trying to force people to have to take these jobs by crashing the globalized parts of the economy because they are obviously better than starving and dying homeless.

All this assuming that Trump isn't just intentionally trying to destroy the country.

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The best option would be to close the gap with immigration but alas...

The US has recently loosened laws regarding child labor. It’s how other countries produce items cheaply, why not the US?

That El Salvador prison could also come in useful.

That always seems to happen with this sort of protections. It's like when the government tries to incentivize people to buy electric cars by paying 25% of it (example from the climate bonus in Sweden, which was given for years), but what happens is that buyers actually end up paying just maybe 5% less as the car companies now can increase their prices and still sell the cars they produce while making more money.

Well yeah, that's the point. Its so factories paying local wages can now compete with factories overseas where wages are much lower.

> every time tariffs were raised the local producers increased prices to be just below the imports.

That's literally how tariffs are supposed to work. I'm confused about what you thought should happen?

Local producers are supposed to raise prices so there is more money for worker pay or business reinvestment or both.

I also don't think it's enough to justify moving manufacturing to the US. The investments are to high, especially for something that might only last for four years. The US also doesn't have enough workers, so wages would increase.

This is expected and normal? Demand for locally sourced goods will skyrocket which means prices should as well. What you are leaving out is that the US is well capitalized and those sky high prices will be a strong incentive for more competitors to join the market. With competition in place prices will eventually fall. Prices will likely never go back as low but at least our fellow countrymen will be employed, housed and hopeful instead of on the streets doing fentanyl.

Count on it. Especially after Trump (AKA we the taxpayers) gave the oligopolies and monopolies huge corporate tax handouts, for which they thanked us with massive price hikes and the current "inflation."

Oh, and of course there were Trump's tax hikes on middle-class Americans to boot.

What a mind-blowing betrayal and mess.

Yes that will invariably happen, barring price controls.

The flaw I see is centered around this paragraph.

> How can rates come down? The present uncertainty around tariffs and a potential crisis could create conditions that pressure interest rates downward before those Treasury securities mature, by influencing Federal Reserve policy.

Rising prices due to tariffs won't pressure the Fed to lower interest rates. It will increase inflation and worries of inflation, which will actually pressure the Fed to RAISE interest rates. A slowing economy won't stop inflation... We are likely entering into a period of "stagflation". The way out last time was very high interest rates and short term economic hardship.

> I don't see anyone mentioning that the United States needs to manage its massive national debt, currently in the trillions, by issuing Treasury securities. These securities mature at varying intervals and require continuous "rolling" or refinancing to pay off old debt with new borrowing.

No one is mentioning this because no one cares, least of all the guy who just signed massive tariffs.

What you're describing is the end result of 30-ish years of Republicans implementing "Read my lips: no new taxes" and this country refusing to have to a mature conversation about revenues. Also, over that period, wages remained stagnant, meaning more people look to the government for assistance, which then costs money in the form of deficit spending. The numerous expensive wars didn't help, either.

There's no good fix to this other than some serious revenue raising through taxes on people who can afford it. Of course, those people are of the opinion that they're entitled to net worths that measure as a significant portion of a trillion dollars, and will simply push the costs onto consumers in order to maintain share prices since that's what most of the net worth sits in.

You have to break those people of that idea. Talk of interest rates, Treasury securities, Federal Reserve policy, it's all just noise. The money going in must be a larger portion of the money going out, and significantly burdening the average American with more tax debt isn't going to solve the problem before causing social upheaval.

> I don't see anyone mentioning that the United States needs to manage its massive national debt, currently in the trillions, by issuing Treasury securities.

It's very hard to even assume that's a concern of the current US administration, based on not only the fundamentalist goal of radically cutting taxes and regulations, coupled with the fact that it's purposely pushing a recessive economic policy that defies any logic or reason.

The very least that you'd expect is a progressive tax policy that didn't excluded corporations and mega-rich. You're not seeing any of that.

Tariffs increase prices. This tends to cause a wage-price spiral, and indeed that's one of the stated objectives (increase US wages by onshoring manufacturing). The increase in prices and wages is inflation. This will cause the Treasury to raise rates to force contraction.

Now, so far rates have indeed spiked downwards, but not a huge amount: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-bond-y...

The next consideration is: what is the budget actually going to look like? Is it going to cut spending and leave taxes where they are, resulting in debt paid down, or is it going to be a huge tax giveaway to the top few % while increasing the deficit? (personally I'd bet on the latter)

Then the consideration: other players also get a move. What do the retaliatory tariffs look like? Does cutting off the ability of other countries to earn dollars negatively impact US exports?

Devaluing the dollar against other currencies will also force up rates by the arbitrage principle.

S&P down 4% so far today. Do we think that indicates the measures are good or bad for US industries?

I know there is a crowd that talks about debt alot and these are all legitimate concerns

However they could also raise taxes on capital gains and top end income brackets - which are at ludicrously low levels for folks of significant wealth - which would go a very long way here. Some estimates suggest it could put the US back in a surplus quite quickly

edit: I'm saying there is an argument for raising taxes. I don't think its off the table like some people suggest. I know it may not be popular with some but we could discuss the merits.

Cutting fundamental government services feels wrong too

> What are the flaws in this thinking?

That the national debt matters.

A) The Fed & Treasury have the ability to buy back the securities at any time if they wanted, since they can basically poof the currency into existence. And t-bonds are as good as cash anyways, so that money is basically already in the economy.

B) The country's national debt is also our citizens' savings accounts. Every major company in the country (and the gov't itself) holds an absurd amount of t-bonds because its the best place to store billions of dollars for safe keeping. Paying off the debt means this capital needs to go somewhere. Should it go to China? The EU? Canada? American real estate?

The national debt is probably the most misunderstood concept in the country. It's denominated in USD, unlike other countries, whose debt is borrowed in currencies they don't control. And "paying off" the national debt risks capital flight and/or asset bubbles - both of which are detrimental to the economy.

The system we have in place is a good one.

Thought experiment: consider what would happen if the US Treasury decided interest rates are negative. That is, you pay $10,000 for a bond and receive back $9,900 after 10 years. What do you think this would do to the economy?

Now ratchet up that negative rate to 100%, that is, you pay $10k for a t-bond and eventually it's worth $0 after 10 years. That's pretty much what paying off the national debt would do (in fact, that's probably how the national debt would be paid off, if ordered to do so, the fed would purchase these bonds and the treasury would use the proceeds to buy existing bonds off the open market). It's two sides to the same coin, but instead of prohibiting the purchase of t-bonds, you just disincentivize it.

An economic crisis will reduce tax income though, reducing the ability of government to pay even if the interest is lower

Many critical flaws. Your getting lost confusing the forest for the trees.

For starters you are focusing on the % on the interest payments which is a line item. However when all of your allies stop buying your goods and services you run into bigger problems.

Bonus problem: If one of your internal metrics is that you want to have a trade deficit but nobody to sell to because you have created a hostile environment for trade.

The flaw is that the USD is massively dropping because of the tarifs. This will push up interest rates on US bonds, because bond holders want compensation for the value loss of their bond.

>Treasuries are considered safe during such crisis.

This isn’t a law of nature. The behavior the admin is displaying is exactly the type of thing that leads to your statement not being true anymore.

>The country is at risk of a debt spiral.

The US owes US dollars and can also issue US dollars. There are complications but it's not like you run up a credit card and can't pay.

> What are the flaws in this thinking?

-> Treasuries are considered safe during such crisis.

Is that truly still the case? Does the world consider the US stable right now?

I am astonished at how effectively the administration has blown up every pillar upholding the US economy, short, medium, and long term. The damage done here is incalculable. In all of human history never has so much wealth been destroyed so quickly.

I don't see any way the actions we've already seen haven't moved up drastic action on the US debt by at least a decade. And it's only been a very-few months.

We were probably screwed when we cut taxes going into two crushingly-expensive wars, and certainly were when we cut taxes again, but now we're rushing toward crisis instead of trying to at least delay it.

A plan like that could backfire, as one of the primary things that the Fed looks at when setting interest rates is inflation. Increasing the costs of imports across the board will likely increase inflation, which would make a rate cut less likely.

But in general, I think this is too complicated. The simpler explanation for all this is the Executive branch is currently held by isolationist.

How about a higher income tax or 1% wealth tax?

» The country is at risk of a debt spiral.

This is impossible by definition:

The U.S. dollar is the world's dominant reserve currency.

The trade deficit is balanced by USD flows, which are ultimately reinvested with leverage into American capital markets.

In many ways the US trade deficit combined with the USD reserve currency status is thus what enables the high budget deficit in the first place.

> the United States needs to manage its massive national debt,

> The present uncertainty around tariffs and a potential crisis could create conditions that pressure interest rates downward before those Treasury securities mature, by influencing Federal Reserve policy.

> What are the flaws in this thinking?

Flaw #1:

Massive treasury rollovers isn't new.

22% of all Treasuries have a duration of 1 year or less.

The only new thing is that rates have gone up.

Uncertainty is a short term solution to a long term problem.

Flaw #2:

Economic uncertainty and supply side shocks risks a recession.

Recessions usually increase national debt.

Flaw #3:

The right answer to reducing national debt is to ensure incomes exceed outgoings.

The current administration is so focused on extending trillion dollar tax cuts, no amount of tariffs or government efficiency is going to lower the national debt.

Flaw #4:

Treasuries only really go down during a recession.

Recessions are bad, not good.

If you think finding a tech job is hard now, or that your RSUs are hurting, wait until you see a serious recession.

The flaw is that it's like setting your house on fire because it's cold outside. It may well achieve your goal in the short term, but it won't last, and it's just going to make things much worse in the longer term.

One thing I am not sure about is how much reluctance foreign holders of US treasuries will have to buy more treasuries. My guess is both foreign government and commercial holdings will edge down quite a bit, even without any reciprocal activity. Just because they will have reduced US reserves, and in effect need for treasuries.

God knows what happens if reciprocal activity starts towards using another currency also for global trade.

> Increased demand for Treasuries pushes their prices up and yields down, effectively lowering interest rates.

> What are the flaws in this thinking?

Not sure why international investors would want to buy more t-bonds when the country issuing them is starting a trade war and their money could effectively be locked abroad.

If the Trump admin's goal were to reduce the national debt it would make way more sense to use fiscal policy (increase taxes) rather than some roundabout way to force the Fed's hand on monetary policy. The tariffs do basically function as a massive regressive tax increase in the form of a sales tax, but that comes with truly immense risks on the demand side of the economy. Guess what happens to tax revenue during a recession.

The key, IMHO, is to maintain the status quo of the USD as the safe haven which also has the ability to destroy other safe havens. As long as the USD is the primary safe have the amount of debt is irrelevant.

> The cost of servicing this debt — paying interest rather than reducing principal — is already a major budget item, surpassing Medicare, approaching Defense and Social Security levels.

Military ("defense") expenditures are always understated. Over $180 billion in veteran's benefits were paid last year. This is not counted as military expenditures. Also the debt you talk about is to not only pay for the money sent to Israel and the Ukraine last year, but still for the adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq etc. That just becomes generic debt in the skewed analysis, alienated from its past military adventures. The military budget is higher than stated.

Fed rate influences treasury rates, but it's not a direct impact. If creditors lose faith in our fiscal situation, rates will rise no matter what the Fed does.

Trump is a wildcard, but I could see the US defaulting on its debt, probably in some way that focuses the default burden on foreign countries holding US debt with some relief for domestic holders. I would definitely not be holding it over the coming few years.

> Treasuries are considered safe during such crisis.

No. Not during such crisis. It's already visible in prices of traditional safe havens (those based on US credibility) that this crisis isn't like the others. They are dropping like flies. Only gold remains.

Tax receipts drop during recessions, generally governments have to issue even -more- debt during them.

I agree with you. To just offer a counterpoint, I sometimes see quotes like this one:

  But plenty of economists looked at the economic hole left by the 2008 financial crisis,
  and concluded the stimulus policies on the table weren't nearly big enough to fill it.
  The size of the hole is all that matters.
  Whatever level of deficit spending is required to fill it is the right level of deficit spending.[1]

  We need the government to be out there borrowing money because of the long-term investments it's making in our economy[2]

1) The government is special because it can go to extreme measures to repay loans if necessary (i.e., print more money or raise taxes)

2) The reliability of the government means that it can borrow at a low rate (say, 3%) and make investments that are worth far more than that (say, 10%).

Put those together, and the government's borrowing amounts to a net benefit to society.

This argument reminds me of the 'then a miracle occurs' comic [3]. It doesn't hold water because

1) The extreme measures are very harmful - they cause high inflation and hardship amongst taxpayers.

2) Even if we accept that government investment makes a good return (a highly questionable assertion), that return does not go to the government. If the government borrows money to build a new road, then there is no doubt some economic benefit, but the government does not receive that benefit, and they are on the hook for the repayment anyway. So government spending does represent a pure cost - not an "investment". And in any case, interest payments represent investment that can no longer happen.

I would also point out that back when we ran briefly ran a surplus in the late 1990s, economists were not exclaiming about how terrible this was, or how paying off the debt represented a missed opportunity or a catastophe in the making. Everyone agreed at that time that surpluses were good, and that paying down the debt was good. The current "this is fine" thinking smacks of economists who have a predisposition to accept and justify the status quo, whether it is objectively good or not.

So all of that is to say that I'm with you - government debt is bad. We are in danger of some combination of insolvency, default, or very high inflation. And once we enter that spiral it will be impossible to get out of it without permanent damage to the economy and the global standing of the US (such as it is).

[1] https://theweek.com/articles/618419/why-americas-gigantic-na...

[2] https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/bonds/us-debt-econo...

[3] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sidney+Harris+comic+miracle+occurs...

This is just delusional. Everybody is looking for some reason that makes this less stupid than it looks, but there is none.

Intentionally causing a recession to lower the debt burden makes no sense, neither politically nor economically. Besides that the US is not some third world country that issues debt in a currency they have no sovereignty over.

The F-35 jet will cost over $1.5 Trillion, doesn't work and won't be used

Cancel it and stop making everyone's daily life absolute hell by doubling the prices of groceries, car payments, etc. every month

National Debt is not a problem for a country that will be around for 1000+ years unless you know of something that is going to greatly shorten that.

There are nearly 1,000 BILLIONAIRES in the US, the debt is their problem, they can pay more taxes until it's down to a number you like.

I think what’s happening backstage in this magic show are desperate moves to recapitalize the country. Foreign and domestic investors are pledging to spend trillions, probably under duress. Stocks are being crashed to create a flight to treasuries. Dollars are partially anchored to crypto by so-called stable coins. Federal assets are getting dumped and operating costs cut.

Maybe we will get out of this without having to survive on cat food, but I’m not holding my breath.

"If the fed won't lower the interest rate I'll tank the economy until they do!"

  Vietnam: Exports 136.6, Imports 13.1 Deficit = 123.5

Vietnam exports low value physical goods to the US. The US sells high value non-physical services such as Microsoft office, ChatGPT, Netflix, Facebook ads, iOS Appstore fees, iCloud subscriptions, etc to Vietnam. Other services include engineering consultants, US tax auditors, US consulting companies, etc. None of these are factored into the formula.

So a country like Vietnam gets royally screwed by this formula. They are actually buying way more from the US than just the physical goods.

If you're Vietnam, it's very hard to "just take it" as suggested by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The formula is flawed in the first place.

If we truly want fair, the formula should be based on total profit of the goods and services sold. Services have much higher margins than physical goods typically.

Some think AI helped with the formula

https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114271484597938775

Holy cow! I had to check for myself: there are even more data points on trade balance for all countries at https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/index.html (whereas @orthonormalist used a partial list from wikipedia) and the percentages I calculate line up exactly with the Trump's full list of "Tariffs Charged to the USA" percentages (https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1907541343250878752) !!

Specifically they used 2024 trade balance figures. Example: take a random country, like Botswana, and the country's page at https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7930.html shows a 2024 trade balance of 104.3 (exports) and 405.1 (imports) so 1-104.3/405.1 = 0.74 which matches the "74%" "tariffs charged to the USA" claimed by Trump...

Rarely you get handed such blatant evidence that someone produced bullshit numbers and/or doesn't understand where the numbers come from !

thanks for the information. In light of this, it seems pretty silly: economy on a world scale isn't a line, it's more like a ring (country A has a deficit with country B, which has a deficit with country ... N which has a deficit with country A) at best. Isn't it like saying everyone should trade everything at the same price with everyone?

Can anyone else confirm this is true? I’m feeling a bit sceptical here.

...and every country USA has a positive trade with, will get slapped with the 10% tariff. Every country on the table Trump posted, that have received the 10% tariff, the US have a positive trade with.

No winners in this one.

> Globalization has played a big role in creating the massive income inequality in our country; it seems like we should fix that.

Wouldn't restoring the prior taxes to those with highest incomes, and adding a proper capital gains tax, address this directly? As I've started to accumulate small amounts of wealth I've realized, my capital gains are taxed lower than my income; when I sell my house, I get up to 500k of gains tax free. If I backdoor a Roth IRA, I get tax free gains there too. etc. Add additional taxes to investment properties, in the form of property taxes could be one approach as well - I personally know of one investor that owns at least 20 (SFH) properties for example. So I'd propose starting there, as it targets both the wealth gap as well as hits those who can most afford it directly.

> Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at the same time as raising cost of goods and weakening the dollar.

If tariffs significantly reduce demand, or worse cause a recession, they will have the opposite effect. It would take time to sort out the full impact. But AFAIK, the tax cuts are proposed to be pushed through immediately, without firm corresponding spending reductions nor time to sort out the impact of the tariffs; similarly the tariffs are being implemented in what seems like a haphazard way, with everyone unsure of what they would / will be, how much, etc.

In general, I think if the plan were modest tax increases, esp. around capital gains policy and targeting SFH as investments, (very) modest tariffs, and well executed spending cuts, nobody would be in uproar. I will be pleasantly surprised if the current plan ends well, but it certainly feels as though only those steeped deeply in ideology are supportive of them at the present moment, and I think that is probably telling.

If you believe in these tariffs then the major problem is how he enacted them. Businesses want certainty. It takes years to build factories. The next president could just wipe away these tariffs instantly. Hell, even the current one could. That does not give these companies the certainty they need to commit years of effort to building factories. If the goal is to spur domestic manufacturing then, at a minimum, he would get the tariffs enacted via a new law so they're more likely to stick for the long term.

Tarrifs are a tool that must be applied strategically. You typically announce tarrifs years in advance so business can shift their logistics and build out manufacturing where you want it. However a daily change in tariffs only creates a chaos that the economy cannot simply respond to fast enough.

A new steel mill won't magically appear in the middle of the US within a month.

> What about the former domestic producers who could not compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new job which pays as well?

What about all of the domestic producers of finished goods who can now can not afford their materials and supplies? What about the domestic supplier of that finished goods producer who has their orders cut because the finished goods producer needs to cut production? What about the domestic consumer who'd like to buy those finished goods, but they can't afford it because prices over all have increased? What about the barber shop by the finished goods plant that has to shut down because the finished goods plant cut their workforce by 50%?

100+ years of studying tariffs have shown that they are effective when very narrowly targeted. Otherwise they almost never achieve their stated goal of actually increasing domestic production.

Should we tax goods from Mississippi to NY to save jobs in NYC? After all, wages in NYC are way higher than in MS. Trade with MS pulls down wages with NYC.

JD Vance had a nice speech about globalisation lately, he describes how globalisation made the rest of the world advanced and rich: https://x.com/OopsGuess/status/1902396228404674853

So if people were trying to make the world a better place congratulations they succeeded. JD Vance uses a bit different framing(!).

Anyway, back to your question, IMHO the problem in thinking here is that it implies that there must be "They" and "Us". You can't just get prosperous as a humanity, it needs to be a subgroup like "Americans" or "Germans" that do amazing things and they are very unsatisfied that Chinese and Indians got advanced and no longer do the shitty jobs. When they say globalism has failed us, they mean we thought that Vietnamese will keep making our shoes but now they are making cars too.

Essentially the core of the problem(or ideal) is nationalism and borders associated with it, preventing of people move around and pursue happiness.

A group of people like the generations of Americans who pioneered many technologies and sciences built a world, then other group of people(mostly their offsprings or people who caught up thanks to proximity to the ground zero) operated within that world and made some choices and transformed the world into something else. Now, they are unhappy with the current state and propose teaming up around something like religion/attitudes around genders etc. If you subscribe to the idea that people should team around these things and if you think that you won't be suffering that much and you don't care that some people might suffer a lot, then yes the current actions actually makes sense.

I agree with the goal. I disagree with the execution.

First, from the outside looking in, it appears these tariffs were implemented in an adhoc basis which disrupt supply chains potentially bankrupting companies and result in more layoffs in the short term.

Second, there should be a carve-out on tariff policy to respond to national security interests. e.g., if and when the US wants Ukraine to rebuild its fledgling export economy, the US should set the tariff on Ukraine's products to zero as it is in the US' interests that Ukraine is financially strong. Similarly, the US should use tariffs to protect industries it deems strategic such as manufacturing advanced computer chips.

In other words, instead of using a purely political process to set tariff policy, I would argue tariffs should be managed by an impartial semi-independent agency such as the Federal Reserve. The governors of such a tariff agency should be tasked with the goals of advancing long term US interests, economically, employment-wise, and national security interests.

> So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees that these are issues we ought to solve, what would you propose?

Good faith negotiations with our allies and trading partners that creates a balance of trade and reduces wealth inequality in the west. I'm not opposed to the actual ideas being floated, but the people doing are are completely unserious and it's being implemented in a stupid nonsense way.

If it's fundamentally a jobs program, you can be a lot smarter about it than tariffs.

If companies couldn't compete before, they're now further disincentivized to compete, leaving the rest of us worse off and uncompetitive with the rest of the world.

Tariffs are just bad policy.

As a software engineer dealing with bits and bytes all day, it's easy to lose sight of the hard and sharp parts of reality. My wife is a chemical engineer who actually goes into a factory and is constantly dealing with production issues in actually making soap, ice cream, chemicals flow (different factories over her career).

JD Vance had an interview somewhere (I think in the NYTimes?) where he claimed that national prosperity is downstream of military might which is downstream of industrial base. It made me stop and think, because that does line up with what I was taught about how the Allies won WW2, and the US beat the Soviets in the Cold War: we outproduced them. I'm not sure if this is "fighting the last war", though, since I imagine a lot of warfare going forward is going to be technological and with things like drones, etc.

It's just so easy to deal with our economic abstraction, of dollars flying around, and computer work, and services and so on, that I sometimes do wonder about your point here about the actual physical, production of goods, and how important that is. Can you have a long term, stable, healthy, successful country that doesn't (and can't) produce anything physical?

We clearly can still make some stuff. I have a great squat rack and barbell set from Rogue Fitness, which makes stuff here in the USA (captured in this beautiful advertisement video[0]), and it's awesome. But I also have a made-in-the-USA wood pellet smoker which is garbage, and which I kind of wish I had just bought from China.

All to say, yeah, I think there's the potential for there to be something along the lines of what you're saying. That said, the implementation is maybe not great. Even taking the Tesla Texas Gigafactory, which was built in warp speed (construction to first cars in about 1.5 years), that's only leaving 2 years before a potential next administration could roll back the tariffs if they wanted.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aCMGqA6_XY

You can't look at this move as something in isolation. Trump has also completely flipped geopolitics on their head.

Here's other things he's done:

- Threatened Canada

- Threatened Greenland/Denmark

- Supported Russia (it's obvious)

- Told NATO allies export F-35s will be nerfed just in case we come into conflict

Americans are already very insular, I don't think you all realise just how much you've pissed off Europe and Canada (I live in both places throughout the year, family in both)...

American multinationals have benefited greatly from trade with other countries... Look around the world: iPhones and Apple products everywhere, Windows computers, Google dominates search, the USA is a top travel destination, American weapons are used by most allies, etc...

Right now in Canada and European countries we're talking about completely cutting out all US trade and travel. Like all of it. It won't be policy but the US has completely destroyed all goodwill and cultural influence it has across the "West".

Because of immense hatred of Russia, China is now the "lesser evil" and pretty much all developed countries will band together. And not only will countries move on from US hegemony, they'll accept any pain that comes with it because Russia is threatening Europe and the USA is threatening their neighbours. Without the geopolitical aspect, the US might have won this trade war. But no one is going to bow to the US to then get sold out and conquered by Russia...

Agreed there are serious restructuring that needs to happen in the US.

That said this approach doesn't make a lot of sense. There are many ways to do this without antagonizing all of your allies which only helps out your enemies and ostracizes the U.S.

Loss of confidence in the greenback is deeply problematic for US power.

>For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has made goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former domestic producers who could not compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new job which pays as well?

We could instead pay for re-education and training for these folks to find jobs that do align better with the global economy and bolster social safety nets to help with job loss.

Tariffs are no guarantee the jobs will come back either or even if some of the manufacturing does come back to the US, that it will employ people who need it most or in the same number. Manufacturing automation is quite sophisticated nowadays. Even if the manufacturing comes back to the US - which I don't think is going to happen en masse if at all - the employment prospects that you're suggesting in this line of reasoning won't come back with them, is what the evidence suggests.

>There really are structural challenges to onshoring production due to strength of the dollar due to its reserve currency status; our society as such is biased heavily toward importing goods rather than exporting goods. This is a real challenge that needs to be addressed as well.

Why? Why is onshoring production of non critical goods a benefit to the US as a whole over the long term? Why do we want to protect manufacturing interests at the expense of other interests? These questions haven't been addressed. Not to mention the pain tariffs are going to cause isn't being addressed either, we're simply told to 'grin and bear it', and for what are we doing that exactly? Whats the actual nuts and bolts plan here?

Everywhere I look at the argument for tariffs I come up short on legitimate answers to these questions

>Our national debt is not sustainable either. Either we pay it down some, or we inflate it away; these are the two ways it goes away, ignoring the option of a world-shattering default on the debt. Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at the same time as raising cost of goods and weakening the dollar.

There's other ways to handle the national debt than put broad tariffs on all our trading partners - including allies who have actually been very generous about their trade terms and investments in the US, like Japan, the UK (really much of western Europe), Canada etc.

If we really want to strength the dollar, we could raise wealth taxes (like capital gains or instituting a land value tax for example) and moderate spending. Why are tariffs superior to this? Tariffs only hurt the poor and middle classes anyway, who can't simply fly out of the country for large purchases to avoid them.

I really want to read a good response to this comment. I have the same questions, and I’ll add one more thought.

Lots of people talk about how the US should be more like Europe. People say the average European has a better quality of life, etc. Well, Europe has tariffs…

Progressive taxation, better public services, universal healthcare, free education for all

If you really want to onshore production, you don't increase taxes on the import of raw materials, parts, and components, you only do so for finished goods. That isn't what this administration has done though. They say they want to increase domestic manufacturing, but their actions clearly prove that that is not their goal.

There are two different questions here: (1) is Trump's strategy a good one to accomplish his goals? and (2) what are other good ideas to do so?

Just because there aren't many ideas in bucket #2 doesn't mean you should do #1.

For a trivial example, consider steel and aluminum tariffs (Larry Summers gave this example on Bloomberg yesterday):

There are 60x more jobs in industries that rely on steel/aluminum inputs than there are in the US steel/aluminium producers. 60x!

Steel/aluminum tariffs increase the cost of inputs to the companies that employ those 60x more people; their businesses suffer; those jobs are more at risk.

Meanwhile, it will take a decade for steel/aluminum production to be fully done within the US, and even then it will be a higher cost (i.e. the reason the US imports a big share of aluminium from Canada is that Canada uses cheap hydro energy to produce it - something that the US can't do).

Through that decade, every single item that uses imported steel/aluminum as an input will be more expensive for average Americans.

So you risk 60x the jobs, for a slow and ultimately non-competitive local industry rebuild, and meanwhile average Americans pay higher costs.

Now multiply that across every category of good in the economy?

#1 is bad. I don't have a great idea for #2, but #1 is bad.

> very real national problems that this might address.

This is a dubious claim to begin with. If you believe that 'trade deficits are bad,' can you explain why? Post Covid, the US economy has emerged in significantly better shape than nearly every other country in the world, so I'm failing to see how these deficits are meaningful.

> Globalization has played a big role in creating the massive income inequality in our country

What is your source for this belief, especially when comparing globalization with other factors that cause inequality? From my understanding, the biggest recent contributors to a higher cost of living in the US are housing, health, and education. Health and education purely services-oriented, and housing is one-third a labor cost.

> our society as such is biased heavily toward importing goods rather than exporting goods

I think that's great. America exports services. We innovate to create new technology, are a leader in designing the things and systems that people want (think of our tech industry), and we delegate the work of manufacturing to others. That seems fine to me, and a function of having (relatively) open, free trade.

> So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees that these are issues we ought to solve, what would you propose?

At a high level, the problem is that free trade makes the pie bigger, but causes distribution/inequality problems. So generally speaking, the best measures are going to be those that improve inequality while minimizing the impact to the size of the pie. Raise taxes on the wealthy, increase spending on social programs to the non-wealthy, fund investments in programs that benefit everyone equally. (Public transit, libraries, healthcare, education, etc.)

Tariffs shrink the pie, and I'd heavily bet against those hurt by globalization being those who are able to grab a bigger slice under the current administration.

According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, there are 7 million unemployed in the U.S. currently.

I don't know how you expect these to cover for all the manufacturing you imply might come back to the U.S. with these tariffs, and that's assuming the space and the production means (factories, etc.) are here already. They aren't, and not for a couple years.

Combined to the fact that the U.S. is clearly sending a signal that coming there is dangerous now, especially for any other category than white males, and I don't see how you can even imagine that this situation is going to be working out.

> what about the former domestic producers who could not compete,

Tariffs won't make them any better at their jobs. So the American customer can expect higher prices and lower quality of products and services.

> Everyone is quick to deride this move as stupid. I don’t disagree that there are downsides to the approach, but there is a set of very real national problems that this might address.

Because it is stupid. It's important to point out that this is stupid and not only doesn't help with problems that come with the benefits of globalization but makes it worse. How will a deep recession fox anything? Including debt(which is high but manageable under a sane government)

Globalization is fine. Wages in this country are quite high overall. Inequality isn't caused by trade, it's caused by low taxes on rich people, weak unions, and weak labor regulation.

The terrible state of US production is a myth. The US is the second largest manufacturer in the world. The #1 spot is occupied by a country with over 4x our population. Manufacturing employment is down because our manufacturing productivity is really high. Yeah, we don't assemble smartphones or make plastic trinkets. We make cars and jetliners and computer chips.

If you want to address the national debt and inequality, the solution is to correct the power imbalance between employers and employees by strengthening labor regulations and unions, and to raise taxes, especially on high incomes, and especially on the super wealthy. Taxing people like Elon Musk down to a more manageable 10 or 11 figures of net worth won't do a lot for the nation's finances directly, but it will do a lot to curb their power and get the government to be more responsive to our interests instead of theirs.

(And no, tariffs are not a good way to do this, since they're regressive.)

There is a net outflow of US dollars, because we keep issuing new debt. The fix there is to stop issuing new debt, by fixing the budget. Sadly, no one seems to think this administration will do that.

Tax corporations and the wealthy since they receive the majority of the benefits. They benefit from a trained healthy workforce, social safety nets, infrastructure like roads and electricity and water. They benefit form the US dollar being the reserve currency for most of the world. I literally cannot list all the ways these two groups benefit in a real tangible outsized way than any other individual.

Trump wants to eliminate all federal taxes. That's NOT going to reduce the deficit. The current republican spending bill includes a 4.5T tax cut to the wealthy and businesses, while cutting only 2T in spending from entitlements WE PAY INTO SEPARATE FROM TAXES. I am entitled to the money that me and my employer pay into Social Security, it's an investment, not a tax.

Let's stop taking from working people who are quickly falling further and further into poverty and start taking from the people who literally own everything!

> For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has made goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former domestic producers who could not compete

That misses the point on so many levels. First of all consider that this is a domestic problem too. What about all the businesses abandoning California for Texas because wages are so much lower to achieve an equivalent cost of living?

Cheaper goods produced elsewhere is not necessarily a security concern for the economy. Silicon produced only in Taiwan is a security concern for the US, for example, but rubber production isn't even though the US cannot produce natural rubber.

Finally, and most importantly, price depreciation of goods due to global options frees up American businesses and employees to seek more lucrative ventures as the market demands that would other not exist due to opportunity costs.

It's not the idea, it's how it was rolled out, how poorly it was communicated, how little sense the numbers mean.

Do you honestly believe that there are significant numbers of US citizens lining up to take up low-margin manufacturing work as is currently done in China or elsewhere?

Chinese manufacturing workers live on a $25k/y income ($15k without adjusting for purchasing parity!). Do you beliefe that raising prices on goods by 30%ish is enough to make those jobs attractive to US citizens?

What sectors would you suggest primarily sourcing domestic manufacturing workers from, and would you agree that just doing that is going to lead to further cost increase for the average consumer?

In my view, the current tariff approach is a rather naive attempt at improving national self-sufficiency at the cost of the average citizen, and the administrations explicit statements and goals make this pretty clear-- shifting government income from taxes to tariffs is a very obvious losing move for the vast majority of people that spend most of their income.

US economy right now is heavily biased towards providing services and high-tech goods because that is the most valuable use of its citizens according to market dynamics. Managing the economy in a "I know better than the market way" certainly did not work out for the soviets...

Sometimes I feel that people construct elaborate theories of how Trumps policies will end up beneficial for the average citizen, despite clear, explicit descriptions of how that is not the goal and historical precedent of acting directly against working-class interests (i.e. raising estate tax exemptions above literal 1%er-thresholds).

One unintended benefit of this move might be reducing greenhouse gas emissions from global shipping ... if US consumers are consuming more US made products, the supply chain for those projects will have gotten significantly shorter in nautical miles.

I'm hesitant credit President Trump with this too soon though, after all, his motto is "drill drill drill", but It's going to be interesting to see what happens.

Tax the billionaires and the behemoth corporations.

This is a bunch of nonsense that is not driven by data and not even worth a response.

I am tired of people spitting BS just to defend Trump's inane policies and everyone else having to rederive modern economic trade theory in comments in order to counter it.

Physicists used to get a bunch of derision for thinking their high skills in analytical thinking in physics easily carried over to other fields, and now we have CS majors thinking the same.

Regardless I will do some of the countering:

> what about the former domestic producers who could not compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new job which pays as well?

We had a candidates that offered job re-training programs. Those candidates weren't selected and those jobs went away even as we tried to put up protectionist domestic policy.

> our society as such is biased heavily toward importing goods rather than exporting goods.

This is fine. Comparative advantages and all. We just need to produce the goods necessary for national security. It worked out well so far. Do we actually want to have other countries do the high value services and us doing the low value manufacturing???? Why are you justifying engaging in a trade war with Cambodia and Vietnam?

> Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at the same time as raising cost of goods and weakening the dollar.

This is not backed by any data. Every single economic thinkthank worth a damn, including conservative ones, have detailed how it will raise the national debt.

I am tired of people saying ridiculous arguments just so they can stave off cognitive dissonance.

Tearing down our soft power and throwig out every trade deal we have carefully crafted since WWII is absolutely ridiculous.

[dead]

> So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees that these are issues we ought to solve, what would you propose?

The solution is clear, let the tax cuts expire, and increase the taxes on corporations. Make special tax incentives on real investment and innovation.

Make a special tax for the four individuals behind Trump at the inauguration, who own more health than 60% of the US population.

Stop allowing billionaires and corporations cheat the tax code to have lower effective rates than the majority of US citizens.

I am sure the 14 billionaires on Trump cabinet will be working on this right away... \s

The weighted average of the new U.S. tariffs will be 29% it seems.

Maybe they know the consequences, but to give you a idea... it was 1.5% before. The new ones will be equivalent to Brazilian tariffs in 1989 before opening the economy (31%, data from World Bank).

Now, Brazilian tariffs, which have one if the most closed economies, by weighted average, is 7%.

China, have 2.2%.

The United States will be an autarchy, similar to how LaTam was in the 70's, when tried this exact idea. The tariffs being as high instantly, will impact the economy, later, the country will probably grow, which is what they expect, but this is not a productive grow. Because your new factories now are not competing with external products, so your productivity go down, this means real income will also go down.

So yeah, some people at best (if is not a robot doing the job) will have a job in a factory, but on what he will be able to spend with his wage won't make it worth even for this person.

If that is the plan, it's terrible. The majority of US debt is domestic.

https://usafacts.org/articles/which-countries-own-the-most-u...

People are also getting way too caught up in the math and numbers. They think WH calculated the percentages through incompetence but the 25% tariffs weren't based on anything very real either. The entire goal is not carefully calculated trade equality, it's mafia style intimidation to get some easy concessions as quickly as possible from everybody... before the economy crashes too hard. Spamming tariffs to see what sticks. The math is just a plausible justification for something they would have done anyway.

It's bully tactics.

For ex see Canada's fentynal importation issue, which was something invented to justify a natsec emergency legally. The numbers don't have to be real, just plausibly deniable.

>They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD

Devaluing dollar does not reduce debt measured in dollars. It only makes US debt less valuable to forefingers.

Devaluing dollar can work well only if foreign investments into US stop or reverse. "foreign investors at the end of last year owned 18% of U.S. stocks, according to Goldman Sachs" The trend has already reversed https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/foreign-demand-us-assets-... Killing foreign demand for US assets more permanently is possible but it means financial market crash.

What WILL happen is recession. Atlanta Fed GDPNow dropped from -2.8 to -3.7 percent in a week. https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow?date=2025-04...

Given everything recent I’d say competence in the WH is a stretch

The prez is literally holding up placards where half the numbers on it are mislabelled and they rest of the numbers are that mislabelled/misunderstood number divided by half

That sounds like garden variety incompetence to me not 5D chess

The bring manufacturing back to the US never made sense to be numbers wise.

Thing A is currently manufactured in China | Vietnam | whatever lower cost country and sold for $x today. Slap on 50% tariffs so now it costs $1.5x. That provides an incentive to produce thing A locally sure.

But if you can already produce thing A locally for $x, you wouldn't have offshored the production in the first place. Maybe producing thing A locally will cost less than $1.5x, but it'll still be more than $x. So cost still end up increasing.

Am I missing something?

As a professional armchair economist, I would call it a power off rather than a reset.

It took over a hundred years for countries to once again have economic trust with France again when they went hard on tariffs in the 1600s causing war.

Who in their right mind would negotiate with a man known to rip up existing agreements on a whim?!

I have a feeling that this will knock the United States down a peg economically to the point where we look back on Liberation Day as America’s Brexit

> I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?

Clearly they will "secure the vote". Massive voter disenfranchisement is already taking place, it will go to the next level.

> Maybe by 2027?

Why on earth would you spend millions and billions of dollars on investing into a ROI-10-year factory, when a cheeseburger overdose or, heaven forbid, the Dems winning another election will take that investment and turn it straight into the toilet?

Not to mention that you'll be locked out of the world's markets, thanks to reciprocal tariffs.

> they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows

If they do they’re lying. The mechanism by which tariffs restore production is by raising prices. That makes it more lucrative to invest in serving that market. If producers have to absorb the tariff, they won’t boost production and the tariff is just a corporate tax increase.

> to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD

That’s called inflation!

> What's the plan for that?

The answer to this is pretty simple, although American Exceptionalism makes it hard to see for many Americans. For every other country, most could see pretty clearly that they'll not plan on holding free elections going forward.

Why don’t you look up how they came up with those tariff numbers and come back and tell us that this is some sophisticated economics at play here.

"Personally I think it's a mistake but hot takes "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe naive."

They slapped 10pct tariffs on the Heard and McDonald islands. Literally uninhabited islands in Antarctica.

This sounds like typical NYT sane-washing. After the Signal fiasco I've lost all confidence this administration is secretly super competent but just refuses to let any of us see it. There is no big plan here. This is just an old man surrounded by too many yes-men.

I am amazed at how many people are still imputing intelligence to Donald Trump. Him winning the presidency again after everything is less about him being some deep mastermind and more an exposure of the issues with America that have been there building for decades now.

The difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2 is that all the "establishment" R politicians who were "corrupt" or "deep state" but willing to work with him could at least steer the ship in the first term. Those people are gone and all who remain are ideologues and yes-men. Trying to find logic in the madness strikes me as someone going through the stages of grief near death, trying to find sense in a senseless, uncaring world. Take occam's razor, no one is steering the ship at the white house right now.

You have seen nothing yet. Next he will want a mineral deal with each country to pay back the money they stole from the USA in the past. "Primate Behavior Reference 21": https://youtu.be/GhxqIITtTtU

My personal opinion is less complicated: they're pulling the economic levers they have in a way that they can use to enrich the top 0.1% even more. The richest of the rich got very wealthy during COVID (economic fallout, buying up lots of stocks at a discount then the biggest stock market bull run we've ever seen) and they want to make it happen again.

I have never caught even the slightest whiff of Trump knowing what he's doing on any topic. I'm genuinely not trying to be glib either, this is a sincere observation. When has he publicly or privately intimated that he understands how tariffs or trade work? Or energy or immigration or infrastructure or technology? His public persona gives facile and misleading explanations that are ostensibly just politicking, but every tidbit of leaked insider accounts or hot mics or unguarded moments don't show anything more than the same persona.

I don't think its about devaluing the currency to pay back debt at all. I believe it's about a fundamental vision of an autark USA, decoupled from any international obligations, whether its NATO, WHO or WTO and focused purely on producing and selling domestically whilst having a "beautiful ocean on each side".

I believe that's an unrealistic vision, not least since America's debt means it cannot afford significant shrinkage of its global market or a loss of its status as reserve currency, but I believe autarkie is the goal none the less.

> hot takes "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe naive. They know. They just don't care

I think they know, they care and decided that it is a reasonable way forward given very limited (trade and budget deficit) options. Otherwise I think you are spot on.

To spitball some ideas on your midterm comment (again, agree to it). One possibility is they see it as an unavoidable loss, plan on using veto to maintain course set during the first 2 years (which is why they rush) and hope to be in the updraft phase by the November 2028 elections. Maybe.

> a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these have not been understood by the WH

I think you're making the same mistake a lot of observers are making: you're looking at this from an economic perspective, and think those decisions were taken on an economic basis. But that is likely not the case.

The Trumpist movement is entirely focused on political aims: re-establishing old hierarchies of power inside the country, and entrenching them for good. The important work is the slashing and burning of welfare and safeguards for lower and middle classes, putting minorities "back in their place", and entrenching the wealthy into positions of absolute dominance. Everything else is a distraction, to keep newspeople busy and the population focused on recreating an idealized, "Happy Days" 1950 society. Enemies will be created to make you hate, this or that policy will be picked up or dropped just to keep you arguing, and meanwhile the important work is made irreversible. Once you destroy what was built over a century, it will take decades to rebuild them, and meanwhile the New Normal will take root and become impossibly hard to remove.

Fascism and nazism did not move from economic principles - they picked up what they needed as they went, opportunistically, because their main aims were fundamentally political. The Trump II administration works in the same way: the priority is political dominance to achieve political aims at societal level, everything else is tangential and opportunistic.

> and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows.

Well, a lot of economists, including one Nobel Prize winner (Paul Krugman) have commented on this being a bad idea for the economy...

On the off chance that those people who are supposed to know what they are talking about are all wrong and haven't thought about it being some genius diversion tactics -- it's generally still a pretty bad idea for a government to effectively ask everyone to "tough it out" and "just trust me bro".

It's really disappointing that people are actually trying to theorize this as some kind of genius plan. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the amount of irreparable damage they have already done to regular folks is unacceptable (uh... I'm sure some nutters out there think that DOGE is keeping track of all the damages they have done and will pay everyone once their genius plans have worked out).

That kind of logic really amazes me.

> they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows.

I agree that that's their understanding. I'd argue that in reality they don't, they can't. International relations are a very complex system. And there is no precedent of an empire wilfully dismantling its periphery.

I really don't enjoy the whole "may you live in interesting times" thingy

> They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD

Given how dependent usa is on foreign debt, that sounds crazy to me.

If they accomplish that sort of thing, they wont be able to borrow at favourable rates anymore. That seems incredibly bad for usa. Am i missing something on how severe that would be?

Of course they don't know. Should be obvious by now.

They are not experts in the field. But loyalists for a trump autocracy

That runs against basic financial reality. The treasuries are the basis of all U.S. liquidity. Owning commercial papers or stocks doesn't help as companies own treasuries. Putting deposits in banks won't help either because banks hold treasuries.

> . I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?

given that they've done most of the things they accuse others of, I wouldn't be surprised if they win by 110%.

> They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD

I don't understand, who's holding that "foreign held debt"? foreign countries I suppose, so which countries do you have in mind?

For one, it's not China, which holds a large amount of US treasury bonds (so basically, China is a lender of USD). So the revaluation of USD would work great for China: one, the value of the China-held USD bonds increases, and second, the price of Chinese exports decreases in USD terms.

So help me understand, what's the plan with the revaluation of USD?

Of course there are people who know. But not the decision maker. I notice the use of collective pronouns, but there is only one person driving this. Everyone else is riding the tiger.

Not sure why, despite long and consistent experience, that people keep thinking he’s anyone but exactly who he appears to be. There’s no grand plan, calculated risk, or 4D-chess. The clown is just putting on a performance, based on his immediate feelings, and the immediate reaction of the crowd. There’s nothing else there.

>What amazes me is the timing: the midterms will hit while the bottom is still chugging along. I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?

tax cut financed by the tariffs? Will buy/mislead a lot of voters when those checks would get sent mid next year.

Especially those voters who couldn't notice that all those countries having tariffs (and VAT) are worse economically than US in major part because US didn't until now have much tariffs to speak of.

they understand first order effects, but second or higher orders are seldom predictable in this matters. So the risk is huge. This massive shock will reveal hidden frailties.

I think this is what's going on:

https://youtu.be/cmTeg0B9tH8?si=yhIAg45FCBUW40mI

>> hot takes "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe naive

While I agree they probably have some idea what will happen, don't forget that these same people added a journalist to a group chat where they planned a military attack. They fired a bunch of critical people and then didn't know how to get in touch with them to try and rehire them. Assuming they're total idiots isn't much of a stretch.

Foreign held debt is less than 30% of outstanding, and less than that is sovereign-owned, so I don't think devaluing or attempting to restructure foreign debt via "century bonds" will have much effect on US debt obligations.

I seriously doubt this administration understands any of this. I agree that they don't care, but I don't think they know what's going to happen. No one does.

> ... they know what's going to happen

While we cannot predict the future, it's moving faster. The world system is under immense stress. Complexity at this scale increases the chance of black swans and unpredictable outcomes. Many powerful actors are reacting simultaneously in divergent directions, which can reshape the trajectory altogether. We are vulnerable to cascading surprises.

> the midterms will hit

The plan may be that there are no more elections, or that the only people who are allowed to vote are identified MAGA supporters. Does this seem impossible? Everything Trump has done would have been considered impossible only a couple of months ago.

What Trump reveals is the utter apathy of Americans. They're sheep in lions' clothing, not the other way around.

Trump told you, I don't know why you still wonder what's the plan: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-tells-christians-they...

This was a macro argument assuming a benevolent intention. However if we look purely at self interests the main thrust is to increase revenue on paper to cut taxes. At the same time raise debt ceiling. And when the tarifs proof unsustainable then well, we are in happy deficit spending land with no fault on the drivers side.

Trump wasted his inheritance and has been several times in bankruptcies - and not "I took risks" bankrupt, more "I f*cked up" and "I lied" bankruptcies.

Why do you think we are naive and you aren't?

In my opinion you are giving the US government far too much credit. Trump has through his usage of social media created a weapon that he can strike at anyone that stands in his way. With all branches under Republican control there's simply no one left who can stand up to him without having his political career destroyed. We've seen this story unfold so many times in countries around the world - Turkey would be one recent example where the misguided policies of Erdogan have left the country with record inflation rates for years.

There may have been a hint of strategy at one time. But the sheer level of gross incompetence coming from every side of this administration does not really lead one to believe that "global 4d chess trade war" is within the actual abilities of this administration to grasp.

> I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?

They tried to steal an election already - it's pretty easy to understand why they are making decisions as if they don't have to worry about elections anymore

They literally took trade deficit %s and represented them as tariffs levied by those countries.

Personally I think that their bet is - it will hurt US, but it will devastate EU and hurt China more than US. EU is fragile economically and political instability will follow if its economy crashes. Especially if US pushes OPEC to jack up the prices.

> Rust belt sewing shops and Walmart grade cheap goods production lines?

Are we really going to see this happening in 2 years? I'm not sure about this. The cost of Mexican/South Asian factories are still a lot lower than US.

Foreign debt is held in US treasuries, surely they know that? Trump can decide that treasuries can no longer be redeemed, but foreigners only hold 20% of them, so…he would have to somehow make them selectively redeemable, and anyways, there would go the USA’s credit, unless you mean other countries can bribe Trump with treasuries to bring down their tariff? They could also depreciate the USD reducing its debt in real terms but that will most definitely cause hyper inflation along with tariffs.

They have no plan, not even a concept of a plan. Trump is just hoping that he can get lucky with a good outcome, but that is really improbable. This is a huge opportunity for China though if they make deals with everyone else to the exclusion of the USA.

Even the idea of moving production back the USA is misguided, we are already at low unemployment, and haven’t made enough investments in automation like the Chinese are doing ATM. I doubt China will let us import that tech to setup our own factories quickly without worrying about who will work them.

I had hoped that this kind of "Trump is actually playing 4d chess, you just don't understand" argument would be dismissed after seeing him through the first term, but apparently not.

> What amazes me is the timing

If it didn't hit midterms it would hit the next presidential race. You gotta pick your poison. I guess they decided it's better to just get it over with.

They might be smart about it like you said, but they might also just be stupid. And the theory that they are smart about it is based on a whole bunch more assumptions...

I tend to agree with you that they know. However the signal leeks showed me that they are not just playing stupid in public - it seems that they are like that for real.

> "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe naive.

There could be someone who understands this. But this someone never shows their face in public, or provides any rationale for the policies beyond the nonsense like "reciprocal tariffs" or similar nonsense. I mean the literal board with tariff percentages that was held up had numbers that made NO sense, to anyone! Yet there are no critical questions?

It's beginning to feel like a conspiracy theory. That behind the obvious idiots who are the faces of the policies, are some other, less inept people who are pulling the strings. But who would this be?

> they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows.

If there are elections in 2026 and 2030 then what follows is a blue wave in the midterms and millions of disappointed voters who had their 401k's gutted, saw prices of most goods increase 10%+ in 2 years, saw little to no tax cuts, lost their jobs if they worked for the government, and lost their social security.

> What's the plan for that?

Trump ran on a campaign that voting is a pain and you won't have to do it again if he wins. Since then he's maintained that third term is the plan. Doesn't really matter how upset the voting population is if you're going to ignore their votes.

By the time the midterms come along I doubt there will be many people left who want the job of fixing up this mess. So they will likely get to keep it.

Even the best economists can't predict economy results from "small" actions.

With global ones like this - they are absolutely oblivious what will happen.

This is, as they say, “sanewashing”. Trump is doing this out of a mix of spite and a view of trade as a zero sum game. He may be advised into a path to try to pivot this into a “win” by large scale debt restructuring, but that is not the overarching motive.

bit of an 11 dimensional chess answer. Senator Chris Murphy has a much better explanation, which is simply this is Trump's way of holding private industry hostage [1]. The tariffs will be incrementally removed as various private industries give him loyalty pledges just as he is doing with large law firms and universities. that's it! so simple.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3llu...

> the midterms will hit while the bottom is still chugging along. I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?

There won't be any elections. We will stick with Trumpism. We will be our own best friends, Morty. The outside world will be our enemy. We will do great things Morty, we will do the greatest things. A Trump administration for a 100 years. A Trump administration forever. Over and over. Running around, the Trump administration forever.

This is a good take, but I think I can answer your question about the midterms. This is timed specifically for them. The drop we're seeing in markets right now isn't a pricing in of the tariffs, per se (at least, not yet), it's a pricing in of policy uncertainty that is going to lead to a near-term drop in investment.

However, because they are doing it so early, they will have time to recalibrate and bake in exemptions until the market / inflation is happy. Up to and including backing off of the policy entirely, if that ends up being necessary. As a political strategy, it is perfectly timed to allow Trump to "save the economy" from his own policies. This is true imo independently of what you may think about the policy as policy.

When it comes to the policy as such, recipirocal tariffs, conceptually, are designed to incentivize the overall global reduction in tariffs. So, as a headline, implementing "reciprocal tariffs" is actually favorable to free trade. However, there are some important details that they have fucked up, such as identifying tariffs with trade deficits in general, and in particular identifying them with trade deficits in goods only. That is really the component of the policy that doesn't make sense, and it is important.

Most likely, they will recalibrate and/or provide a lot of exemptions, particularly as the midterms approach. As a political tactic, I think it will work out fairly well, if they respond to the feedback appropriately - that's the big question though, and that uncertainty is the most significant reason for the market drop.

This explanation doesn’t make sense because dollar denominated debt doesn’t change with devaluation.

What is the more likely explanation is all the countries with trade surpluses will feel the pain long before the US and agree to much better terms than before.

The PM of Canada had already indicated progress is being made on their trade deal.

If they hold the midterms...

Always keep in mind that Blackrock manages the retirement/social insurance funds of a lot of countries. If the USD crashes, they will, too.

The aftermath will probably be complete isolation of the US, because no country will want to trade with them. And the administration is fine with that, because they're not interested in keeping the status quo of democracy alive.

More influence for them, less influence from outside. That's how oligarchs think and act.

That all sounds fine except that the admin have no intention of keeping these tariffs, rendering your point kind of moot. Trump will enact/retract these tariffs multiple times over just the next month, and few to none of them will still be this high in three months. Since we are just speculating here - what is probably going on is that Trump has some very bad ideas and no one is allowed to contradict him. I'm sure there are people around him that know better, but he really is this simple minded. To your point about midterms, I'm sure his Project 2025 handlers are beside themselves that he's doing this, but there is little they can do to stop him.

> What amazes me is the timing: the midterms will hit while the bottom is still chugging along.

I think Trump is getting unpopular actions out of the way quickly, perhaps planning to announce an income tax reduction later to save the midterm elections.

I have followed writings of the many in this administration, seen their interviews etc. Anyone who thinks there is a "5D chess", "the plan" etc. is purely drinking cope here.

> cheap labor factories again isn't going to happen in 2025

It is not going to happen ever unless we plan to move people from better paying jobs in McDonalds and WellsFargo to China styled factories or we allow much higher immigration levels from South America.

Trump admin and his advisors genuinely believe that tariffs are good, that they will create factories and jobs within USA and enable white families to raise families on a single income. They think rest of the world's existence is a mistake, they hate Europe, China, India and South America. They don't know much about Africa and admire Russia.

The 2nd paragraph is 100% accurate.

Trump 2 is as far from Trump 1 as Trump 1 was from W. Bush.

I hold a more pessimistic view of the cause and I do agree with your argument that they do know the consequences. But they don't care for another reason.

The plutocracy has fully captured the government and now seeks its ultimate goal: complete transfer of all tax burden to the 99%. For this end they cut the government spending, wrecking the democracy and they impose tariffs to generate fake temporary revenues, so they can argue that the huge tax cut (dwarfing all that came before) is economically sound and fully justified.

This will wreck the global economy and with the coming bad times (wars, famine, extreme migration) nobody will have the presence or the governmental weight to rein in these few rich man.

Probably the plan for that is to do massive gaslighting on social media and find someone to blame for the hardship. Leveraging emotions (especially the aggressive ones) may be an effective way to keep support of the base.

I really wish I was more optimistic and share your position that voters are driven by self-interest. I hope you're right though.

Rich people are typically insulated from economic downturns, especially ones they cause, by their ability to shift investments and asset allocations to mitigate and/or profit from changing tides.

Furthermore, Trump has never bought his own groceries, pumped his own gas, or interviewed for a job so retail prices and layoffs are abstractions "for plebs". Plus, he's reaching the end of his life so he doesn't have very much proverbial skin in the game since his motivations revolve almost exclusively around himself.

"The king is walking around naked; surely he's got a great reason for that. And his advisors wouldn't let him do it if there wasn't a deeper purpose!"

It looks too complex, IMO. As someone living in Trump's beloved country (Russia), I'd say you should ask, "Cui prodest?" If some oligarchs (currently called billionaires, but we'll see) surrounding Trump benefit financially from these tariffs, then the plan isn't about state debt—it's about their personal wealth.

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Would love to know what your country's tariffs are on the US.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Is not the US export far higher than import if they take into account the software and other IT services they sell? I would expect other countires to tarrif that.

I don't think the current US administration understand the EU.

There are some things where I have my doubts about the current actions of the European countries, like rearmament. Will that be dropped the minute a new US administration enters? What the EU does well, like really well, is trade and bureaucracy. It is, in my mind one of the few areas where the EU can absolutely run circles around the US, while managing to protect and isolate itself from the worst fallout. We've already seen this with the current EU tariffs, they are extremely precise and targets Republican votes at almost no cost to EU consumers. I think that will continue, rather than imposing broad tariffs, the EU will target things Trump care about specifically.

0% chance of this happening, but I like the idea.

Another possible retaliation is countries stop exports of particular products to the US. China has already done this with rare earth based materials. Asian countries could decide not to allow the US to buy specific small popular microcontrollers. This can be worked around, but it takes time to lay out a new PCB, port the firmware, and test it all, and that costs money.

The EU has already been doing that with "fines".