[fulladder]

Not going to comment on the politics, but I'd point out that recession odds on Kalshi are currently 64% and 58% on Polymarket [1,2]. In other words, recession in 2025 is more likely than not -- though far from guaranteed.

My thought relevant to HN is that either way this is likely to decimate venture capital and startups, at least in the short run. Venture capital funds come from limited partners like pensions and endowments, and the professionals I know are all shifting away from growth stocks and into value, international and bonds. VC is already in a drought (except for AI) and now my guess is that it's going to get worse. So many VCs I know have started only in the last 15 years, so they have never seen a real recession like 2009 while working in venture.

[1] https://kalshi.com/markets/kxrecssnber/recession

[2] https://polymarket.com/event/us-recession-in-2025

[xnx]

Those odds must incorporate some expectations that recent actions get reversed (and quickly!). Recession is guaranteed if new rules stay in place.

[nwatson]

It's too late, these actions have shown how truly fragile and arbitrary USA policy is, and extreme anti-current-rules-based-order views are rampant in USA politics. Policy will be volatile and no multinationals or governments will want to deal with the chaos.

[biophysboy]

Reversing the actions would require either a 2/3 veto proof majority or Trump realizing he is wrong, both of which will probably take a while...

[NewJazz]

I don't think this is quite true. Because these tariffs have been levied under the guise of a national emergency, they technically need to be confirmed by the legislature within X number of days. The House is playing tricks to not hold a vote, and I'm not sure if they need cloture in the senate, but I don't think they need 2/3 to slap the tariffs down.

[fulladder]

That is true. X=150 under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which is the authority under which Trump is establishing the tariffs. After 150 days, someone could file a lawsuit to reverse the tariffs if there has not been any vote.

"None of these trade provisions empowers Mr. Trump to impose tariffs on all imports from all countries based on an arbitrary formula. Section 122 lets a President impose tariffs of up to 15% in response to trade deficits, but Congress must approve them after 150 days. Someone should sue to block his abuse of power."

Source: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-disturbance... (https://archive.ph/l2272)

[ipython]

Nope. The rider to the “clean cr” took care of that contingency.

https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hres211/BILLS-119hres211r... - see page 4

[NewJazz]

OK but they still just need a majority in the house to undo that? And that is assuming that silliness isn't smacked down in the courts forcing them to hold a vote anyway.

[ipython]

It’s more that it absolves them from having to hold a vote to continue the “emergency”. I believe the emergency act requires congress to vote to continue the emergency after a certain number of days.

But the republicans know that would be embarrassing to hold a public vote to do so- so they sneak in shit like this, to continue to be cowards since they’re too scared to publicly endorse the cruelty.

[rsynnott]

No-one’s seeing the impact yet (except for those who pay day-to-day attention to the markets, but that’s not a huge number of people), because nothing has actually happened yet. The tariffs go into effect on the 9th, and China’s retaliatory tariffs go into effect towards the end of the month; the EU’s retaliation will probably start hitting in May. Over the next month, it is likely that Americans will see prices go up dramatically, and significant job loss is likely. Considering how upset Americans got over expensive eggs, you’ve got to assume every congressperson is about to drown under a sea of angry calls and letters from constituents.

That might actually produce a veto-proof majority for undoing this, quite quickly.

[mindslight]

Two thirds of the Senate, only half of the House. Focusing on reversing just the tariffs is a waste of effort. The traditional ownership-class backers of the Republican party need to wake up to the reality that this bankruptcy enthusiast will only bring further destruction and ruin, start leaning on some congresscritters to buck the maggot party line, and depose this America-hating fuck. That's about the only hope of the United States being able to rebuild credibility.

[energy123]

This is basically 1 - P(tariffs get repealed).

[ijustlovemath]

Anyone who's played cards or an MMO know those are insanely good odds -- virtually guaranteed!

[Terr_]

X-Com: Enemy Known, where you're forced to play with a certain squad leader who is always either out of Time Units, panicking, or mind-controlled, and a 99% hit chance is not really 99%.

[gU9x3u8XmQNG]

This made me laugh.. then cry..

Thanks for the memories!

[pinkmuffinere]

> virtually guaranteed!

I feel like you might be confused about the statement. One platform gives 58% odds, the other gives 64% odds. This is obviously high, but also very far from virtually guaranteed. In 100 trials, we’d expect recession in ~60 events. There is no secret math hidden here, it’s just that.

[dmoy]

GP comment is a joke about gambler fallacy (or also MMO crit, drop, etc rates)

[pinkmuffinere]

Ah lol, I just totally missed the joke

[NekkoDroid]

And if you play Pokemon you know anything not 100% is 50%.

[jmye]

> My thought relevant to HN is that either way this is likely to decimate venture capital and startups, at least in the short run.

Yeah, seemed like the IPOs were really getting going again, but I think that likely dries right up, too.

Unless you figured out how to materialize rare earths out of thin air, or spin up an automated factory in six months, it’s hard to imagine anyone will be looking to give you money.

[fulladder]

It's already happening. Klarna canceled their IPO. So did StubHub. I think it's a safe bet that all planned IPOs have been canceled for the time being.

[ripped_britches]

Financial markets are generally better indicators of overall sentiment than betting sites but point taken

[csomar]

The betting site did predict Trump will win the election.

[itake]

The crypto betting site users had high sentiment trump would win

[FabHK]

If the betting site is used as a hedge, then the equilibrium prices don’t reflect real-world probabilities.

Suppose people predicted that Trump would tank the economy and wanted a few extra dollars in that case. An extra dollar in a Trump world would be worth more than in a normal world, thus distorting betting.

[fulladder]

Actually, that's not what I've found. When I have compared betting sites like Kalshi and Polymarket to the implied probability of Fed rate cuts in the interest rate futures market, I have found them to match up and move in lock step with each other. (I don't work for any of these companies and I don't use the betting sites myself; just stating my observation.)

[ProjectArcturis]

That's because there's an easy arbitrage. If the prices get out of line with each other, anyone can buy the cheap one, sell the expensive one, and get free money.

[darksaints]

Good. Silicon Valley collectively sold their souls to Saudi Arabia, and put their full weight behind Trump because that’s what Saudi Arabia wanted, and now they are gonna get what they deserve. I hope their wealth is destroyed to the point of needing to care about Social Security and Medicare.

[brailsafe]

What souls did Silicon Valley ever have, c'mon srsly

[acdha]

There used to be more of an image of making the world better - people were still talking about getting rich, of course, but there was a sense that they were going change the world more positively in the spirit of Steve Jobs’ bicycle for the mind quote, and it seemed like that got dropped in the 2010s when everything got so focused on adtech riches and, later, the cryptocurrency marketing push tried to finalize everything without delivering anything truly beneficial to the users.

[brailsafe]

"Making the world a better place" is an incredible marketing trick, almost good enough to fool the people working at the companies into feeling like they were doing more than selling electronics, and chronic anxiety.

The only way to convince someone the world needs to be made better is to either convince them it sucks or force it to suck. Ad tech just said the quiet part out loud.