Rationale to Trump's Tariffs

[I Have Questions]

Trump now doing the trade tariff okey cokey…

[Bond]

If he's going to do this every month we've only got *checks notes* 46 more times where he puffs up then immediately folds throwing the stock market into chaos.

[Gadianton]

The whole dollar devaluing thing seems so odd to me. I just recently ran across Miran's suggestion to sell off Fort Knox to foreign investors. The massive soaking up of foreign currency will devalue the dollar, which in theory, could result in lowering the trade deficit and put the US on the path to a trade surplus. But why? Is it really just apologetics for Trump's vision - an invented academic framework to make some sense out of his chaos? He likes tariffs and so by golly, his team will figure out a way to make sense of it? What do they actually want?

As I'm thinking this through, where I'm at right now is without answers as to any stated objectives. However, I feel like I've caught a glimpse of the incentives for the billionaires haplessly moving toward the light. First a person's job is outsourced, and they are left with a lower paying job. Then home prices go through the roof, and a person is forced to be a renter. Eventually, their last hope is to make it long enough to collect social security.

The sheep have been sheared to the skin. What more can can be taken?

Well, as an American, such a person still has a dollar that can get them cheap stuff from Temu to make their trailer cozy. Another option is to live overseas where that social security check can afford a decent retirement. Being an American still has that little bit of privilege. It's not that the rich are specifically thinking, we need to break the dollar so that all the ex-pats and trailer folks become homeless. Some understand the consequence, others still imagine in their minds that the best the poor can hope for is the success of the rich so the benefits will trickle down. I can't even say its explicitly to export, perhaps for some it is. As Americans become poorer, then sell abroad. It's just in the long play to achieve ultimate inequality, the subconscious goal, for the 1% to own 99%, a strong dollar could be the greatest barrier to execute that last big squeeze.

[Gunnar]

I just watched an interview with Yaris Varoufakis, a Greek economist at the University of Athens, who explained that Trump's tariffs are actually about forcing foreign banks to sell off their stock of US currency in order to drive up the dollar and reduce the trade deficit. Varoufakis does not like or endorse Trump's tariffs, and ultimately he thinks that they will anger Wall Street and the big real estate holders so much that he will be forced to abandon them, thereby casting off his working class constituency. Still, I thought this was an interesting break from "Trump is so dumb, and he clearly does not understand tariffs."

See https://youtu.be/Ms5-Z7sqiww?si=U2z92ZFjDdkjd8tl

Yaris Varoufakis' hypothesis or theory sounds very plausible and scary to me. Whether Trump is smart enough to have come up with it or fully understand it may be questionable. I read with great interest all the other participants to this discussion I have read, so far, and found them to be very thought provoking. I don't know enough to be sure what Trump really intends, or how competently he could carry out this plan or some similar plan. What I am sure about, is that he really only cares about how he can best benefit and further enrich himself and maximize his power and invulnerability to adverse consequences to himself, including justly deserved prosecution and prison time. I don't think he gives a whit about how many will be hurt or endangered in order to achieve his goals, as long as he can hold onto and even further enhance his wealth and power for the remainder of his life. I think he would even throw his own family under the bus, if he thought he could benefit by it.

[Kishkumen]

Yaris Varoufakis' hypothesis or theory sounds very plausible and scary to me. Whether Trump is smart enough to have come up with it or fully understand it may be questionable. I read with great interest all the other participants to this discussion I have read, so far, and found them to be very thought provoking. I don't know enough to be sure what Trump really intends, or how competently he could carry out this plan or some similar plan. What I am sure about, is that he really only cares about how he can best benefit and further enrich himself and maximize his power and invulnerability to adverse consequences to himself, including justly deserved prosecution and prison time. I don't think he gives a whit about how many will be hurt or endangered in order to achieve his goals, as long as he can hold onto and even further enhance his wealth and power for the remainder of his life. I think he would even throw his own family under the bus, if he thought he could benefit by it.

It is true that Trump has been big on tariffs for a long time and yet has never evinced any real understanding of them to date.

[ajax18]

I suppose the face value of imposing tariffs on American imports is that Americans will end up funding the tariffs if they continue purchasing imported goods - because the suppliers will simply pass on the tariff charging via price increases.

That might drive Americans to buy alternative American-made goods. But if American-made goods were of equal or better quality, they’d be buying them already.

The other potential outcome is that foreign goods no longer get exported to America. Resulting in less choice for the American consumer. Is that a desirable outcome?

Perhaps you should ask the labor unions if America really does make less expensive and higher quality vehicles than other countries since unions took over and the right to work without being a union member was abolished.

[canpakes]

I suppose the face value of imposing tariffs on American imports is that Americans will end up funding the tariffs if they continue purchasing imported goods - because the suppliers will simply pass on the tariff charging via price increases.

That might drive Americans to buy alternative American-made goods. But if American-made goods were of equal or better quality, they’d be buying them already.

The other potential outcome is that foreign goods no longer get exported to America. Resulting in less choice for the American consumer. Is that a desirable outcome?

Perhaps you should ask the labor unions if America really does make less expensive and higher quality vehicles than other countries since unions took over and the right to work without being a union member was abolished.

There are around 400,000 US autoworkers that are union members. This is far reduced from the 1.5 million strong membership of several decades ago.

[Gadianton]

Perhaps you should ask the labor unions if America really does make less expensive and higher quality vehicles than other countries since unions took over and the right to work without being a union member was abolished.

If autoworkers are making way too much money, and we need to cut their pay substantially in order to be competitive, then why in the hell are we trying to rebuild auto manufacturing? what's the point?

[ajax18]

Perhaps you should ask the labor unions if America really does make less expensive and higher quality vehicles than other countries since unions took over and the right to work without being a union member was abolished.

If autoworkers are making way too much money, and we need to cut their pay substantially in order to be competitive, then why in the hell are we trying to rebuild auto manufacturing? what's the point?

There's a difference between cutting pay and refusing to subsidize. But you have a fair point.

Tarriffs have caused Taiwanese semiconductor manuacturerss to move from Taiwan to Arizona to avoid the tarriff.

[drumdude]

50% on the 6,000 inhabitants of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

Trump's tariffs are not calculated based on other countries tariffs at all, they're literally just the trade deficits, the difference between 2024 imports and exports of goods between the two countries expressed as %.


Basically the way a toddler might implement the idea of a tariff.