Rationale to Trump's Tariffs

[Kishkumen]

Bye bye retirement....
Hello indentured corporate servitude!

My thoughts exactly.

[Gadianton]

Best overview of the "steel man" version I've found so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ts5wJ6OfzA&t=32s

In general this guy's channel has been number 1 on my list to baseline macro topics that are of interest to some people on this board, such as housing affordability or even inflation. He's an econ professor (maybe was) and comes at it totally orthodox, no MMT or Austrian stuff. Breaks it down as simple as it can be and I'd say very thorough.

[Gadianton]

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

Sure, buddy.

"There are real world implications for this stuff. Trade wars are in fact not good and not easy to win, particularly if you don't have a plan. It is predicated on a bad idea of how international trade works. A fundamental misunderstanding of trade deficits. Trade deficits, they are a accounting procedure. Trade deficits pretty much have nothing to do with the health of an economy. I can name you a period in history when there was a fairly large surplus in American balance of trade. The entire Great Depression." - Ben Shapiro (yesterday).

Make America Madagascar again.

[Moksha]

Trump's tariffs have sparked a geopolitical contagion.

[Moksha]

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has issued a blunt warning about President Donald Trump’s tariff policy: It threatens to raise prices, drive the global economy into a downturn, and weaken America’s standing in the world.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/ ... index.html

[Gadianton]

At this point we're in the same position as Russia in 2022. Putin launches a war, it fails on day 1. But fate is locked because other than a handful of delusional contrarians and a few stupid people, he is the only person in the world to continue to believe in himself and nobody is strong enough to stop him. Commentators quickly saw the "offramp" problem. This guy can turn around, he just needs an offramp. How do we get him an offramp? No, because Putin has enough street smarts to know he'd be taking an offramp, and that he might save face, but everyone including himself knows the truth. Same thing here, Trump launches a war, he fails on day 1, and everyone is speculating that he just needs an offramp. Maybe some deals can be made or he'll back down. Nope. He can't be wrong, and nobody can stop him. The only people who believe in him at this point are a few contrarians and stupid people.

Miran's paper is pretty good, in my opinion, as it presents the only real best-case-scenario for Trump tariffs out there, and it's pretty damn coherent. Granted, it's not peer reviewed, but if it's apologetics, it's top tier apologetics. One of the good things about it is that his positions are generally falsifiable. He doesn't look ahead and plan for a way to be right independent of what Trump does. Perhaps this is because it was written before Trump became president, and perhaps as a serious recommendation, outlining the only ways tariffs could realistically work. And he admits he's a lone voice, he writes as his own person and not representing Hudson Bay or anyone else. He admits that he's a lone voice, but that he feels Wall Street is wrong.

In his Implementation section, he writes:

President Trump, and those likely to staff his economic policy team, have a history of caring deeply about financial markets and citing the stock market as evidence of economic strength and the popularity of his policies. A second Trump Administration is likely therefore take steps to ensure large structural changes to the international tax code occur in ways that are minimally disruptive to markets and the economy. There are several steps that would help mitigate any adverse consequences

There's our first direct falsification of his paper. Likely because of this paper, Miran was tapped as chair of Trump's council of economic advisors. He's the staff. And he just falsified his own prediction. So Miran's paper, the only game in town that I'm aware of with a chance in hell of justifying extreme tariffs, is in the process of getting falsified.

[Kishkumen]

At this point we're in the same position as Russia in 2022. Putin launches a war, it fails on day 1. But fate is locked because other than a handful of delusional contrarians and a few stupid people, he is the only person in the world to continue to believe in himself and nobody is strong enough to stop him. Commentators quickly saw the "offramp" problem. This guy can turn around, he just needs an offramp. How do we get him an offramp? No, because Putin has enough street smarts to know he'd be taking an offramp, and that he might save face, but everyone including himself knows the truth. Same thing here, Trump launches a war, he fails on day 1, and everyone is speculating that he just needs an offramp. Maybe some deals can be made or he'll back down. Nope. He can't be wrong, and nobody can stop him. The only people who believe in him at this point are a few contrarians and stupid people.

And fools. And terrorists.

It is amazing what you can achieve by cobbling together all of the mental and moral rot in our country into a single constituency.

[Some Schmo]

It is amazing what you can achieve by cobbling together all of the mental and moral rot in our country into a single constituency.

LOL

This generated a genuinely audible laugh.

[canpakes]

From today’s WSJ:

Apple plans to send more iPhones to the U.S. from India to offset the high cost of China tariffs, people familiar with the matter said.

The adjustments are a short-term stopgap while Apple attempts to win an exemption from President Trump’s tariffs—which Chief Executive Tim Cook obtained during the first Trump administration. The company sees the situation as too uncertain to upend long-term investments in its supply chain, the people said.

I’m not sure if ‘Make India Great Again’ was the intended consequence of the tariffs, but here we are.

[Kishkumen]

LOL

This generated a genuinely audible laugh.

Glad you liked it! On occasion a gem springs forth like Athena.