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Liberation Day. Liberating us from our 401K’s ? Liberating us from the world economy? Liberating us from our friends, allies, and trading partners?
You’ll lose a million in your retirement funds and other assets, but hey — you will pay a few thousand less in taxes when Republicans pass that tax cut for the wealthy. What a bargain.
Of course, that tax cut will just get subsumed by inflation (can’t wait for the stagflation). But Trump is playing 4D chess, so I’m sure it will all be fine.
NO MALARKEY
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My understanding is that this is the strategy: First, understand that GDP is composed of four factors; consumer spending, business investment, government spending, and net trade deficit.
The consumer has been under stress since COVID, and since the consumer lost purchasing power during Biden’s inflation. The trade deficit was minus $578 bils. in Biden’s first year, almost $1 trillion last year ($978 bils.). During that time, consumer spending went from $14.4 trillion to $17.8 trillion, but consumer debt went up by $4 trillion in that time…in other words, net consumer spending stalled, only going up $3.4 trillion. And collective business investment shrank because of COVID and inflation.
The only factor that increased was government spending. It was the only factor that could increase. So we’re in the nightmare scenario, three of the four elements of GDP were going in the wrong direction.
Trump is doing the responsible thing. He’s trying to either accelerate or add to trends in the opposite, positive direction. Businesses were already re-shoring into America. We’re no longer the world’s policeman, so military investment (NATO investment) — and government spending — needs to decrease. Consumers need jobs and net income increases to boost their spending (which happened in Trump’s first term), thereby increasing both consumer spending and business investment, leading to a shrinking trade deficit.
Ergo, tariffs, less military spend and DOGE. Generates revenue for the government. Consumers are incentivized to buy American, which should be less expensive. Businesses are incentivized to build/manufacture here. And we go arm’s length with the rest of the world who were accustomed to benefiting from American largesse and protection.
Audaces fortuna iuvat
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Trump is an economic arsonist and you’re just casually trying to explain it away as if he has some rational economic approach. I mean, I don’t even know how to respond. It’s like trying to debate with someone who is defending a terrorist and expecting to have a reasonable conversation. I simply cannot fathom how you and others on the right don’t see how absolutely fucking insane this administration’s policies are — economic and otherwise.
Sorry Mick. I guess I appreciate the attempt to explain it, but I really hope you get out of whatever weird information bubble you and the others here seem to be in. The world is wondering what the absolute fuck is happening to America and you all on the right seem to think it all makes some kind of sense.
You think we are reshoring jobs? Come on. Take a big picture view. Don’t just look at a few examples (which are usually bullshit, by the way; was it Toyota that announced a “new” plan, after speaking with Trump, to move a factory to the US? They were already planning to build it here, but just rewrote the press release to stroke Trump’s ego.). Take a broader view of the world. They are refusing to do business with us. They will reciprocate tariffs. They are refusing to come to America now (tourism is expected to be WAY down). Canadians are booing us at events. They are not stocking their shelves with American goods. Europe is looking at us like a pariah. Australians wonder what has happened to US. Etc., etc…. Do you live in a bubble? Do you not see this in your news media? Do you see it happening and just not care because all of our allies and partners are now “bad”? I just don’t understand what you guys are smoking.
We will re-shore 100 jobs and lose 10,000 others. What a great strategy.
Just 8 eight weeks ago we had a normal and well functioning economy. You all talked yourselves into some frenzy about how it was actually just terrible (“poison pilled” was the word).
I hope it’s *only* a recession. It will probably be much worse. But like January 6th, you all will quickly talk yourself into believing it’s the Dems fault.
NO MALARKEY
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Trump is an economic arsonist and you’re just casually trying to explain it away as if he has some rational economic approach. I mean, I don’t even know how to respond. It’s like trying to debate with someone who is defending a terrorist and expecting to have a reasonable conversation. I simply cannot fathom how you and others on the right don’t see how absolutely fucking insane this administration’s policies are — economic and otherwise.
Not being casual, just using first-week-of-Econ-101 Economics. I already know you lost, given the names/epithets you’re using. You don’t want a normal, reasoned argument…because you can’t have one.
I’m not saying it will work, I’m saying that’s the reasoning behind his approach. And no…the economy wasn’t humming. We were spending via credit card, both consumers AND the government…and Biden turned a $527 Bils. trade deficit into a $978 bils. trade deficit in just four years, in part because he shut down the economy for two years.
BTW, Clinton lost us millions of manufacturing jobs. MILLIONS. Never heard you complain about Clinton.
Jobs reshored since 2010 are 1.6 million.
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Jobs report just came out. Expected jobs was 120,000, actual new jobs in March were 155,000, significant increase from 84,000 jobs added in February. Wage growth for those staying in their positions increased 4.6%, those who changed jobs experienced a 6.5% increase.
Currently, the number of open positions matches the number of available workers, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
U.S. private sector adds 155,000 jobs
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Mick, the March numbers are more likely a tailwind from the prior administration. As you well know, the hiring process takes months. Whatever job numbers are reflecting in March were the result of job postings and hiring that took place over the prior months.
Trump just started his economic terrorism. Give it a few months or look at the stock market, which is a leading economic indicator. Economics 101, week 2.
NO MALARKEY
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This is what I love, love, love about Lefties. Hoover was in office, so he created The Great Depression.
No, they don’t mention the financial speculation that happened throughout the 1920s (Hoover didn’t take office until 1929). They don’t mention the buying of consumer goods en masse on credit, which happened throughout the 1920s. They don’t mention the 67% increase in the money supply between 1921 and 1929 which led to overinvestment.
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An alternative view on tariffs and the post-WW2 trading environment.
In my view, job #1 is debt service, at this point. Between early COVID relief ($4T) and Bidenomics ($9T), the debt grew out of control. What made it worse was the Fed issued debt at 3-5 year maturities, possibly calculating that they would leave a mess for the next administration. Interest payments are now larger than our defense budget. Refinancing the debt at 4-5% versus 3% would have a compounding effect. DOGE can’t cut enough by itself. We need structural reform of entitlement spending. No one seems to be talking about the Medicaid / Medicare raid used to fund the Inflation Reduction Act / Green New Deal. The country is addicted to debt / consumer spending. We need to return to the fundamentals of capitalism – allocating capital efficiently, and to producing things.
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Here’s a partial solution, one that’s been supported by two politicians as different as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump:
- Have the Federal Government buy the consumer’s debt and turn it into a term loan with fixed repayment terms.
- Charge the consumer LIBOR + 1% instead of the usurious rates charged by Wall Street.
- Presto: the consumer saves money, s/he develops better spending habits, the Federal Government gets another source of revenue valued at $1.5 trillion (the difference between consumer credit card/personal loan/payday loan interest rates and LIBOR+1%).
The only negative is that it sticks it to the part of Wall Street that soaks Main Street.
Sounds like a win-win-win-win to me…
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You all are missing the forest for the trees. The Trump strategy: wreck the economy. That will surely lead to prosperity (we were doing fine by the way).
Try to justify it how ever you please and rationalize it. But at the end of the day it is just monumentally retarded on an epic scale.
Trump is committing economic suicide and you all are sitting here trying to explain it like it makes perfect sense if you just look at xyz numbers and abc metrics.
I’ll try to comment more in a few days — after I finish a major project — with more specifics. In the meantime, I will simply say that conducting a grand experiment with the entire economy is completely irresponsible.
NO MALARKEY
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Trump is trying to reverse generations of economic, political, international and military mismanagement. He needs to address a skyrocketing Federal deficit that is by far the highest in history relative to GDP, a jaw-dropping trade deficit that nearly doubled under Biden’s watch, two generations’ worth of manufacturing jobs that left our shores for that of our enemies, a demographic time bomb of social security, a debt-laden consumer that can’t afford to spend any more, the highest inflation (self-inflicted, BTW) in two generations, a vastly-overextended military and warlike predecessors, and to top it all off, an absolute, total and complete immigration disaster.
There is not a single area of American life that isn’t screaming out to be improved.
I can’t wait for BYT’s solution as to How Trump Should Have Fixed All The Crap Left Behind By Biden And Generations Of Democrat-Controlled Administrations.
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We’ve become accustomed to debates where one side either acts or proposes to act and the other side just says “that’s retarded.” It’s totally unacceptable in real terms…you’d fire a guy who does that. But here we are.
The Democrats, by only advocating for the status quo, are advocating for economic Armageddon; just not on their watch.
So, what’s the alternative approach to re-setting the global trade unfavorably to the middle class American? What’s the alternative to the government led GDP lie we have been living? What’s the alternative to drowning in government debt?
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
Great question. American economic might is the answer. Build our own businesses right on our shores. Prevent the mercantilist notions of other countries (I’m looking at you, China). If it’s bought here, it’s built here.
I didn’t even mention the encroachment of artificial intelligence and ensuing loss of jobs.
But how, how to require that we shrink the trade deficit and build more private employment, while shrinking inefficient government? If only there were a way to eliminate government payrolls, make government more efficient, discourage foreign suppliers and encourage Americans to buy American.
It’s a conundrum.
Not really. Trump is doing it. Man does the Left hate that he’s succeeding.
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BTW, Trump’s trade war is crushing Russia economically. Their signature export is oil (almost 30% of their revenue), and Trump’s administration is forcing the price of oil downwards. Russian Urals grade (their best) slumped to $52.76 per barrel. Russia’s 2025 govt budget assumed an average oil price of $69.70 per barrel. This is going to hurt Russia’s ability to borrow money to finance the war. At least the USA pays back its debt on time, Russia has already defaulted on some of its foreign debt as of June 2022. And Trump’s tariffs means other countries slow down their purchases of oil and gas from Moscow.
Russia’s Central Bank already has interest rates at 21%. Their housing market is grappling with soaring interest rates and curtailed state subsidies for first time buyers. New car sales are at their lowest in a decade. Rail freight traffic is down 20%. Everyone who can afford to leave has made for the border.
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Great. Russia is suffering. I hope you realize that’s just an unintended and very foreseen consequence. It’s like, hey, that rat poison my dog ate cured her ailments. She died, so she now no longer has arthritis. Why didn’t someone think of doing that earlier.
Second, who cares about trade deficits. It’s meaningless without any context. We had surpluses with most countries during the Great Depression. Because we couldn’t afford anything. We now have a trade deficit with Switzerland because we have 40x as many people as them. We will never have a surplus with everyone unless we turn into a third world country or worse and can’t afford to buy anything.
Even if you give Trump the benefit of the doubt (hypothetically), and say that mass tariffs are somehow actually good, Trump is doing it recklessly and irresponsibly. People are losing trust in the US markets. We are losing credibility. We are a bad faith partner who doesn’t honor the trade agreements we signed. We are pissing off friends and allies.
We are going to lose markets for a generation or more because countries will just find other trading partners. Look at what happened in Trump’s first term. The US used to have a major soy bean market. We lost that because China retaliated to U.S. tariffs and imposed a 25% tariff on American soybeans. By the end of 2018, U.S. soybean sales to China had plummeted by 94% . We ended up spending a fortune subsidizing farmers. The soybean business in the USA has never fully recovered and China still gets most of its soybeans from Brazil now.
Meanwhile, you can be sure Trump and his cronies are making a fortune off the chaos:
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by
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NO MALARKEY
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This reply was modified 1 year ago by
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Give me a freaking break. If it were insider trading, it’d be only insiders, right. Everyone with half a brain knew this was coming. It’s what he does, how he negotiates. . ..
We’ve been getting dicked by countries for generations. Even a somewhat less uneven playing field is a huge win for American industry.
Regarding trade deficits, perhaps I’m missing simple math. If we continue to import more than we export, we run out of money, correct? Unless of course we run hopelessly into deep debt. . . .
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Second, who cares about trade deficits.
And if you ever want to know why the Left does so badly economically speaking, here’s Exhibit A. There’s only four elements to a country’s GDP: consumer spending, business investment, government spending and international trade deficit/surplus. That’s it. And ours is $1 trillion, up from $522 bils. when Senile Joe took over. And yet BYT says “who cares.”
That’s week 1, Economics 101. You have no standing to comment on Economics if you don’t understand that basic fact, that we’ve been exporting our wealth for half a century.
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“The US used to have a major soy bean market. We lost that because China retaliated to U.S. tariffs and imposed a 25% tariff on American soybeans. By the end of 2018, U.S. soybean sales to China had plummeted by 94% . We ended up spending a fortune subsidizing farmers. The soybean business in the USA has never fully recovered and China still gets most of its soybeans from Brazil now.”
Please share where you got 94%. Soybean exports to have been 29 MMT +/- 4MMT per year since 2010. Exports fell to a low of 8 MMT in 2018, rebounding to 32 MMT in 2021. It is true China has increased soybean exports from Brazil each year since 2010, in large part due to favorable currency exchange rates, Chinese investment in Brazil and China’s policy of diversifying key import sources.
Soybean exports to China have never been more than 1.5% of total US Soybean exports since 2010.
My export numbers are estimates based on USDA, Chinese customs, and trade data.
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Hey Legend. I agree the use of the term “retarded” is a shortcut to a better discussion. Frankly, I don’t have time to address every moronic (is that a better term) thing being done by the Trump administration in detail. I’ll certainly try to get more specific soon.
In the meantime, I just wish you wouldn’t have a double standard here. Search this board for the terms “Demtard” and “Libtard” (plug those into the search box). You’ll find one guy regularly calling the entire liberal and Democratic side ‘retarded’. Have you or anyone ever admonished him or called him out, or just me?
NO MALARKEY
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https://x.com/BonkDaCarnivore/status/1912156074737643785
I am not happy with further market distortion, and certainly not happy with additional spending.
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