BALTIMORE (AP) — U.S. retail sales tumbled by a record 16.4% from March to April as business shutdowns caused by the coronavirus kept shoppers away, threatened stores across the country and weighed down a sinking economy.
Part of the reason states are opening up earlier than they should (and I am including blue counties and blue states as well) is because they have no faith that Trump will do anything to help on testing/PPE/contact tracing and there is no faith that the federal gov’t will get financial aid to folks who need it in a timely manner.
State Governors see these stats about closures and they’re like ‘screw it, as long as the hospitals won’t get overrun we should move to open as carefully as we can knowing there are real risks in doing so’. It’s not an irrational decision. It is being forced upon them by Trump’s incompetence, and that of the hand of Trump, the equally dumb and venal Jared Kushner.
Another thing to note is that these are real drops despite movement to online sales. We’re sort of in a classic textbook example that one might’ve read about in a college Econ class about a ‘crisis of confidence’. This is a failed economy and it won’t come back without strong federal leadership. Absent that, the path that Cuomo has charted is the most fundamentally sound model for states to use to return to a functional economy.
tRump keeps saying he built the greatest economy the world has ever seen. Not even close. He inherited a great economy, just like he inherited all that money from his daddy who put millions in his pockets. tRump then proceeded to blow it all away, one bankruptcy after another until he figured out how to get into the money laundering business and snooker the regulators in the real estate markets. Btw, this is a man that has probably never paid taxes on most of his worth and we still haven’t seen his fucking taxes.
That’s what he’s done with our economy in his failure to deal with this pandemic. He will continue to wreck the economy. Even if we regain some employment leading to some sales in retail, it will not be enough by November to get us back to where we need to be, nor is he the one or any of his flunkies, who knows how to do that. This is what American Carnage looks like.
I think that you are leaving out the loss in sales tax revenue as a factor in why states want to open up, along with not wanting to pay unemployment benefits.
As I mentioned earlier this week that it was either in Congress or the MO state legislature that wanted to tax all internet sales. The taxing rate would be at the state set level not the local level. As far as I know it never moved forward.
“Please excuse our mess, but we are still open for business!”
Yeah it’s kinda hard to follow the guidelines when they either are kept hidden, or constantly being edited by the WH and not the scientists.
I’m just waiting for Fat Nixon to take credit for propelling Jeff Bezos towards Trillionaire status.
Oh wait…
And none of it had to be. I can’t blame Trump for COVID 19. That’s Mother Natures work but I can fault his way of dealing with it. He just can’t go sleaze free or take himself out of the subject. Hence he made it about him and took on COVID as an enemy and not a virus. Had he confronted it as it is…a virus with devastating power and centered a real effort on that no one would hold him responsible for COVID’s devastation. He’d be praised for taking it on the best he could.
He can’t do that. It has to be about him. So out came his old tools. Lies, blame and deflection. I think he’s finally finished himself.
Then you’ll enjoy this if you haven’t seen it already.
Its true, he’s full of himself…that’s one thing certain. He’s so full of himself there’s no room for anyone else but him in that massively weak ego he’s constructed for himself for all the world to see. In reality, he’s all ID…with ‘IDiot’ as his true calling in life.
OT but I really can’t get over when Trump said the other day we could “cut off our relationship” with China and thus save $500 billion because he thinks that’s what our deficit with them is. Anyone who understands macroeconomics, please check my understanding, but I think that’s analogous to a shoemaker saying “I bought $7,000 worth of food from Farmer Brown last year and he only bought one pair of shoes, so screw him, I’ll cut off my relationship and save $6,500.” I think he honestly believes this, because real money people must tear their hair out when he proposes this kind of thing. As far as I can tell it’d be catastrophic, like asteroid-level unthinkably catastrophic, if we took that route. Plutocrats would be grabbing nooses and pitchforks and rushing toward the White House in a well-groomed and nattily attired mob. Right? Have I got that right?
As someone who lives in a zero sales tax state, that would have never occurred to me but it’s a good point, surprised we haven’t seen more states begin to push online sales tax.
Purchases at retailers are a major component of overall consumer spending, which fuels about 70% of economic growth.
This was the statistic that jumped out at me. Economically, it is the reason that income stabilization for workers was a needed part of the government’s response to the pandemic. (ed.)
If the great majority of people can’t go back to shopping, as a result of joblessness, fear of infection or debt incurred while unemployed as a result of the pandemic, the economy remains mired in the mud regardless of when we purportedly open up.
From your mouth to God’s ears, I pray.
His Nibs was right about one thing; I am tired of all this “winning.”
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
Your concept of the macroeconomic implications is correct. Trump proposes action based on a false equivalence and in defiance of decades of complex supply chain structures.
The basics are this: China holds a vast amount of our debt and they, like other nations, are global manufacturing and trading partners. If he really wants to provoke a strike on the bond markets with China calling in debts, that would be catastrophic in that debt is the lifeblood of international business. Such a move would likely seize the debt markets. China would also hurt itself with such a rash move. So I find that unlikely on China’s part. The message to China and every other nation that partners with the US are that we are deadbeat bad-faith partners.
Where we would see an immediate effect on our national economy is in supply chain management. China supplies many integral parts for industrial and consumer goods. Not just finished products, but parts of finished products. Trump’s old-fashioned 1950s way of looking at manufacturing ignores the decades of highly complex manufacturing processes.
Other commodity markets would suffer. The decades spent building relationships between American soybean partners and their overseas customers can serve as a tabletop example of what Trump evidences a willingness to expand with his irresponsible, idiotic drivel.
Edit for clarity: Trump blew up the soybean markets with his tariffs on imported goods. The Chinese retaliated and found new trading partners for this commodity. Trump screwed American soybean farmers. His rhetoric looks to expand that action.
Thanks. Some of this stuff I have a rudimentary awareness of but I don’t go around full of swaggering confidence in general on the subject. What’s truly astonishing is how little Trump knows about the one thing you might expect him to know about. Was he like that 30 years ago? His record of spectacular, baffling failure suggests it but it’s honestly hard to believe that even with his advantages a person this profoundly stupid could be taken seriously enough to do what he’s done in the course of his life. It’s a puzzle.
online sales tax
We have that in Virginia on every purchase even E bay
The image I hold in mind is that he turns on the gas to his kitchen oven, crawls inside, pulls the door shut and strikes a match; never realizing at any point along the way why this bad end befell him.