Trump's Tariffs and Possible Trade War

[Its On A Slab]

I am perfectly fine with negotiating to benefit our country, but shouldn't the negotiation be done in good faith? Especially with long-standing allies?

And is there no middle ground between "being the suckers" and double digit tariffs out of nowhere? All the "leverage" he thought this debacle would create blew right up in his face and forced him to back down on the vast majority. Expert negotiator there...

I also have a hard time believing that, having been the world's superpower for decades, we worked our way into agreements that are completely lopsided and so utterly untenable like so many seem to want to believe. But I definitely don't claim to be an expert on our trade agreements.

Where does this paranoia originate that has people convinced we are getting reamed by everyone we associate with? Oh right, with the projection of the president who is an expert in screwing the other party in "business deals" and who assumes that everyone else is out to screw him as a result...

The only people I am bumfuzzled with at the moment are the people who voted for him, yet don't understand why he does things like this.

MAGA true believers think he's acting rationally.

We had 4 years of this erratic behavior. What made the average non-cultish voter think bringing him back would be any different?

 

[Bamabuzzard]

I am perfectly fine with negotiating to benefit our country, but shouldn't the negotiation be done in good faith? Especially with long-standing allies?

No doubt, I have zero problems negotiating in good faith. If it were me, I would have approached the countries (before slapping tariffs on them) and requested a renegotiation. But, being in business as long as I have, the odds of them being willing to renegotiate terms that would put them in a less favorable position would be very surprising and unlikely. I would then tell them if they don't, we're implementing tariffs immediately. They either take it or leave it. But we wouldn't walk away from the table with nothing changing about the terms.

Where does this paranoia originate that has people convinced we are getting reamed by everyone we associate with? Oh right, with the projection of the president who is an expert in screwing the other party in "business deals" and who assumes that everyone else is out to screw him as a result...

Us being upside down in global business deals has been a conversation long before Trump ever was a political figure. I don't like the guy and have never voted for him, but let's not act like he is the reason for this conversation. I've heard people for decades talk about how some of the global deals we've gotten in are lopsided. He's just trying to do something about it. Granted, he's probably going about it the wrong way, but this conversation didn't just begin when he became president.

 

[Tidewater]

The only people I am bumfuzzled with at the moment are the people who voted for him, yet don't understand why he does things like this.

MAGA true believers think he's acting rationally.

We had 4 years of this erratic behavior. What made the average non-cultish voter think bringing him back would be any different?

I know it is an obligatory Hitler reference, but Germans in April 1945 were convinced that Hitler was going to unleash his secret weapons and save the day. In April 1945.

I have been developing a theory on thinking. Humans have open minds as long as they have not yet decided. Once they have decided, then their thinking becomes a constant struggle to justify the decision. Sure, some folks will change their minds, but rationalizing and justifying one's already-made decision is easier. This is especially true for sports teams, one's religious convictions, and one's political party.

Trump voters prefer to feel good about voting for Trump so when he messes something up, they justify/rationalize it.
Obama supporters did the same thing (although Obama gave them less cause to have to).

 

[jthomas666]

 

[REBELZED]

Us being upside down in global business deals has been a conversation long before Trump ever was a political figure. I don't like the guy and have never voted for him, but let's not act like he is the reason for this conversation. I've heard people for decades talk about how some of the global deals we've gotten in are lopsided. He's just trying to do something about it. Granted, he's probably going about it the wrong way, but this conversation didn't just begin when he became president.

Again I am no expert, but the places I have seen these "trade imbalance" ideas presented and perpetuated are normally the bloviating, incendiary right-wing outlets. There is always some foreign bad guy in their minds.

 

[Its On A Slab]

There is always some foreign bad guy in their minds.

I keep hearing Ross Perot talking about how the US always has to have their "bad boy" to focus on.

I was never a Perot fan, but even a nut like him could get something right every now and then.

 

[Bamabuzzard]

Again I am no expert, but the places I have seen these "trade imbalance" ideas presented and perpetuated are normally the bloviating, incendiary right-wing outlets. There is always some foreign bad guy in their minds.

Both of us have admitted we're not experts, so we're both left with nothing more than speculative opinions. Whether or not a "deal" is bad is probably the fundamental difference between how two people view their politics. In other words, one sees it as nothing while the other views it as we're getting screwed. So, it depends on how someone views the world.

 

[Its On A Slab]

Again I am no expert, but the places I have seen these "trade imbalance" ideas presented and perpetuated are normally the bloviating, incendiary right-wing outlets. There is always some foreign bad guy in their minds.

Well, they have to have something else to talk about when not bloviating over nontroversies like DEI, critical race theory, transgender bathrooms, and the daily War On Woke(despite never explaining what the "heck" that is besides an obvious dog whistle).

 

[UAH]

No doubt, I have zero problems negotiating in good faith. If it were me, I would have approached the countries (before slapping tariffs on them) and requested a renegotiation. But, being in business as long as I have, the odds of them being willing to renegotiate terms that would put them in a less favorable position would be very surprising and unlikely. I would then tell them if they don't, we're implementing tariffs immediately. They either take it or leave it. But we wouldn't walk away from the table with nothing changing about the terms.



Us being upside down in global business deals has been a conversation long before Trump ever was a political figure. I don't like the guy and have never voted for him, but let's not act like he is the reason for this conversation. I've heard people for decades talk about how some of the global deals we've gotten in are lopsided. He's just trying to do something about it. Granted, he's probably going about it the wrong way, but this conversation didn't just begin when he became president.

The US has never had an industrial policy or for that matter a jobs policy except perhaps for agriculture which appears to have outsized political influence in many countries. "Globlazation" has had the US shipping jobs out of the country and transferring wealth away from the middle class for the last fifty years.

The only means we have to begin addressing it is on a country by country and by strategic industries and commodities.

This probably will never happen of course and we are destined to see the Pacific rim (China) assume dominate technological and industrial leadership.

None of this is going to be addressed by throwing around threats of broad tariffis and shipping our pool of blue collar workers to places like El Salvador.

 

[jthomas666]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/12/...ked_article_code=1._E4.q3ma.ukc4jRNe7krX&smid

The Upstate region of South Carolina was saved by foreign companies after the fall of its textile industry. Now, tariffs pose another round of uncertainty.

 

[jthomas666]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1911076182365442536

 

[jthomas666]

Trump's China tariff shocks US importers. One CEO calls it 'end of days'

U.S. importers are bracing for the impact of President Donald Trump's staggering 145% levy on Chinese imports.

apnews.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rick Woldenberg thought he had come up with a sure-fire plan to protect his Chicago-area educational toy company from President Donald Trump’s massive new taxes on Chinese imports.

“When he announced a 20% tariff, I made a plan to survive 40%, and I thought I was being very clever,” said Woldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, a third-generation family business that has been manufacturing in China for four decades. “I had worked out that for a very modest price increase, we could withstand 40% tariffs, which was an unthinkable increase in costs.”

His worst-case scenario wasn’t worst-case enough. Not even close.

 

[Tidewater]

Someone had posted this above but I did not understand what he meant.
The "tariffs others impose on the US" from Trump's chart were not tariffs at all, but trade imbalances.
If the US send $80 million in stuff to Zubrovka and Zubrovka sells $100 million to the US, then, according to Trump (or his advisors) Zubrovka impooses a 20% tariff on US goods.
Except it does not mean that at all. Maybe Zubrovka is blessed with some desirable natural resource that the US needs for its domestic industry, but Zubovka is poor, so Zubrovkans cannot afford a lot of what the US makes. That explains your trade imbalance. Zubovka could have no tariffs on US goods at all in that situation, but now Trump is imposing a 20% tariff on Zuborvkan goods to "make it fair."
Oy.

That makes as much sense as imposing tariffs based on how many letters are in the name of the foreign country's capital. Baku (Azerbaijan) is good. Johannesburg (South Africa) is very bad.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

There is always some foreign bad guy in their minds.

I don't disagree with this, but let's not pretend this is solely a right-wing thing, either. What do you think "healthcare that can never be taken away from you" by the Clintons was, replete with casting "Big Pharma" and "insurance companies" as the bad guys. With Bernie Sanders and AOC it's those ever present "oligarchs", a word that he wouldn't be able to define any better than a lot of right-wing nitwits can define "socialism."

"That thing/person over there is your enemy, and I'm here to save you from that enemy" didn't start with Donald Trump. Indeed, his success in politics has largely been because he has no restraint of conscience that most of our other elected national leaders eventually expressed.

We have politicians who TO THIS DAY somehow think saying "the NRA caused the school shootings" is a persuasive argument. The problem for these folks is that most folks who support gun owner rights are NOT members of the NRA - and what they don't trust is the government.

Name me a party and I can give you a list of who they can tell you are your enemies.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Btw - if tariffs is this magic pill that's going to create all these manufacturing jobs in the US, why is he not going full bore into tariffs?

If they're not, why does he keep lying about it?
Hint: they're not.

Quite frankly, I just think he's hung up with his malignant narcissism on the phrase "Trump Tariffs."
I honestly think that's all this is.

 

[Tidewater]

Someone had posted this above but I did not understand what he meant.
The "tariffs others impose on the US" from Trump's chart were not tariffs at all, but trade imbalances.
If the US send $80 million in stuff to Zubrovka and Zubrovka sells $100 million to the US, then, according to Trump (or his advisors) Zubrovka impooses a 20% tariff on US goods.
Except it does not mean that at all. Maybe Zubrovka is blessed with some desirable natural resource that the US needs for its domestic industry, but Zubovka is poor, so Zubrovkans cannot afford a lot of what the US makes. That explains your trade imbalance. Zubovka could have no tariffs on US goods at all in that situation, but now Trump is imposing a 20% tariff on Zuborvkan goods to "make it fair."
Oy.

That makes as much sense as imposing tariffs based on how many letters are in the name of the foreign country's capital. Baku (Azerbaijan) is good. Johannesburg (South Africa) is very bad.

Points for anyone who gets the Zubrovka reference.

 

[JDCrimson]

Is it fair to say the federal administrative state is the only institution that was keeping these 2 parties from tearing this country apart at the seams?

I don't disagree with this, but let's not pretend this is solely a right-wing thing, either. What do you think "healthcare that can never be taken away from you" by the Clintons was, replete with casting "Big Pharma" and "insurance companies" as the bad guys. With Bernie Sanders and AOC it's those ever present "oligarchs", a word that he wouldn't be able to define any better than a lot of right-wing nitwits can define "socialism."

"That thing/person over there is your enemy, and I'm here to save you from that enemy" didn't start with Donald Trump. Indeed, his success in politics has largely been because he has no restraint of conscience that most of our other elected national leaders eventually expressed.

We have politicians who TO THIS DAY somehow think saying "the NRA caused the school shootings" is a persuasive argument. The problem for these folks is that most folks who support gun owner rights are NOT members of the NRA - and what they don't trust is the government.

Name me a party and I can give you a list of who they can tell you are your enemies.

 

[Bamaro]

BANGKOK (AP) — China's exports jumped 12.4% in March from a year earlier in a last-minute flurry of activity as companies rushed to beat increases in U.S. tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, and analysts forecast sharp setbacks ahead.

Imports fell 4.3% to $211.3 billion in March, the customs administration reported, far exceeded by exports worth $313.9 billion, leaving a trade surplus of $102.6 billion.

“But shipments are set to drop back over the coming months and quarters,” Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in a report. “We think it could be years before Chinese exports regain current levels.”
China's exports jump 12.4% in March as bigger US tariff hikes loom

 

[Tidewater]

Talking to a friend this past weekend about the tariffs. He is no apologist for Trump, but he is is not opposed to the tariff policy. Here is what he said:

1. Taking the trade imbalance with a country and basing tariffs on that is not as dumb as I had thought. The trade imbalance could be due to the causes I described (maybe the country has an abundance of cheap raw materials the US needs, but does not buy much American stuff because they are poor). Countries have non-tariff barriers (inspection regimes, financing issues, and currency manipulation) so slapping them with tariffs in an effort to encourage them to get rid of the non-tariff barriers.

2. Placing a tariff on an island with no people is not a dumb as it sounds because of trans-shipment. China already does with with some countries and if trans-shipping them through a tariff-free island (either in reality or on paper) gets around the tariffs, then the Chinese will do it. (My comment on that: when the EU slapped an embargo on Russian vodka and caviar in 2014, the Russians would ship vodka and caviar to Belarus. Belarusian merchants would take the Russian labels off, place "Made in Belarus" labels on them and tranship the items to Europe. And trade went the other way as well. French cheeses would get shipped to Belarus, Belarusians would remove the "Made in France" label and voila, a "Belarusian" camembert would get sold to Russian merchants.)

Any talk of Trump adopting the 90-day pause on tariffs to mean he is playing 3D chess is a bunch of horse hockey. He saw the markets taking a dip, and Bessent went to him and talked him out of the tariffs. The roll-out of the policy was a massive screw-up.

So Trump backed into the right policy (hold off on tariffs (but slam the ChiComs).

 

[Bazza]

The only people I am bumfuzzled with at the moment are the people who voted for him, yet don't understand why he does things like this.

MAGA true believers think he's acting rationally.

We had 4 years of this erratic behavior. What made the average non-cultish voter think bringing him back would be any different?