Yes, it’s so easy to win. You people all pay higher prices, while the market tanks and I take credit for some jobs in very limited sectors! How is this hard to understand?
Thank you. At this point, I’m less worried about the latest hit the dumbass has inflicted on my retirement plans than the evidence that the isolation and paranoid megalomania took a jump so large this week you have to use a logarithmic y axis scale to chart it.
Because this is insane. We’re all focused on the economic consequences and the process and we’re ignoring the part where it shows he’s completely out of his goddamned mind. He just made an incredibly consequential, incredibly stupid and damaging policy decision in open defiance of his staff and aides. He actually hid his plans from his staff, and bypassed his chief of staff and aids to get Commerce to secretly set up the pretext.
This is the definition of arbitrary and capricious. This isn’t even banana republic authoritarian decision making. This is how the dictators with absolute, unchecked power with an institutionalized reign of terror make policy. This is Stalin, Mao, Enver Hoxha, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein decision-making. And the one goddamn time the press actually needs to be focused damn near exclusively on process rather than policy, they aren’t doing it.
We keep saying he’s losing it, he’s decompensating before our eyes, he’s coming apart at the seams, and then the following week, we’ve (and, by “we” I mean Congress, AP, NPR and, to a lesser extent, the woke like CNN, WaPo and MSNBC) normalized last week’s level of insanity as a new normal that isn’t very alarming because it’s normal. And then, a couple of weeks later, it takes another leap and the week after that, that’s normal.
And you just want to fucking scream at them: “Imagine if he had been behaving the way he behaved this week in his first week! Imagine if ANY OTHER PRESIDENT had had a week of behavior like this one How much destruction does he get to wreak before you use your power to stop it?”
Look at this week. Look at the madness of just the last five days. Are we actually going to wait for him to wake up one day and decide to incinerate a million people? Are we going to focus on the policy and diplomatic fallout (terrifying pun intended) when he does it rather than the fact that it was a criminal act of madness?
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“trade wars are good, and easy to win,”
Please proceed…
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At this point, the Orange One has a meeting with someone, tweets all the “great” suggestions at a wall the next night to see what will stick. Then the next day takes a meeting with folks who contradict last night’s tweets, the next night he tweets new stuff at the wall to see what sticks and threatens to fire the folks who suggested the stuff from two nights ago.
Anything that doesn’t stick is Obama’s fault.
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Ya mean you are dieing like Alex?
the stooo-pidity of this moron is astounding.
If his retired base has more than just Social Security or cash buried in mason jars to live on, it isn’t going to be very amusing to them, either.
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All of it. The GOP views the US as Ben Tre on a grand scale.
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Speaking as a Mechanical Design Engineer, I don’t think Tariffs are the best way to encourage this, but I actually think that promoting domestic metals production is a good thing. We need to be able to make things in this country. Steel and Aluminum can be recycled over and over again.
I think what he should do instead of a Tariff is implement a Domestic Content provision for anything made of steel or Aluminum purchased by the US Government.This actually solves the problem he’s trying to fix- overdependence on foreign metals sources for the Defense of this country.
The US Government invested heavily in microelectronics in the 1950’s and the 60’s as a way of making electronic controls lighter and more reliable in Spacecraft, Missiles and Military Aircraft. Eventually the commercial sector overtook those efforts technologically. But before that happened, an entire industry was spawned, leading to cheap computing devices and eventually such things as smart phones.
I’m not saying the same thing is going to happen with steel and aluminum. But the US Government should lead with it’s wallet. That would be a lot less intrusive than interfering with the Market.
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pretty much
Unless it was a short-sale, he probably lost money on that. I guess he wasn’t the ‘confidante’ he thought, he was. Tough titty…
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In spite of the warnings to the villagers, it was more important to them that Obama be punished and everything he did for the good be wiped out.
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Does this mean Trump is admitting his actions are an effort to start a trade war, and has nothing to do with the reasons he used to justify it, i.e. national security?
This is surely gonna help in avoiding WTO penalties.
Even if this helps the US In the short run (it most likely wont) the US is only pushing countries towards China. Donald Trump is a disaster for the medium-long term prospects not just of the US, but of democracies all over the world.
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I was looking at this story elsewhere. He’s up against a guy who claims he was Trump before Trump was Trump.
But a former trump supporter from a family who worked in steel mills and is now having buyer’s remorse is planning on supporting Lamb wholeheartedly. If gloating were satisfying I’d do more of it.
“I thought we needed a big change, and boy, did we get it,” she said recently. President Trump “put his foot in his mouth one too many times,” she said.
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This was my point yesterday. If Trump had put tariffs on finished products, then it would be bad, but one could at least make an argument that it may help in the short run.
However, by putting tariffs on raw materials that are used to manufacture other products which are then sold within the US and exported, this won’t even help in the short run. In addition, loss of jobs in the raw materials sector is driven far more by automation than by trade. Even if this increases US steel output significantly, it won’t help jobs close to as much. OTOH, Boeing and Toyota and Ford are more likely to increase their production in their Mexican or Canadian plants where they can get cheaper raw materials, which will almost certainly lead to more job losses than what might be gained.
And that’s assuming there is no retaliation, which will make everyone worse off.
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OK. For which side?
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Trump supporters are responding to all the winning.
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Since these proposed tariffs mainly hit our allies (Canada, Germany, South Korea, etc.), one could argue that he’s simply following through on fulfilling the top of Putin’s wish list – namely, destabilizing the Western Alliance.
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Steel-consuming companies said steel tariffs imposed in 2002 by President George W. Bush ended up wiping out 200,000 U.S. jobs.
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If trumpp used the word “taxes” instead of “tariffs” his proposal would provoke even more outrage than it’s getting.
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Any other President? How about any other person?
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