[lreeves]

You know the craziest thing about watching this as an outsider in Canada is that we as a nation are losing one reliable trading partner (and obviously losing an ally but that's another conversation). Germany - losing a trade partner. Japan? And so on. But the US has lost 180 reliable trading partners. You're already seeing in the first week burgeoning trade alliances between nations who wouldn't have cooperated before, and the amount of resentment against America from this is going to take a generation to heal.

Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess or what not but.. sometimes the person doing something crazy is just crazy at the end of the day.

[toddmorey]

Very well put. Alliances take years to build but can be broken in just days.

I'm tempted to think (hope? dream?) that the markets and trade will rebound if all this chaos makes American politics swing back towards an interest in global stability, but I think anyone partnering with the US would do so VERY carefully and right now the entire world is plotting how to remove US dependencies.

[cycomanic]

I was bringing this up with a guy yesterday who was genuinely supporting the policies and somebody chimed in that they were not worried at all, because everyone wants to trade with the big boy in town. Trust is not important if they are afraid of you (I'm paraphrasing). Quite a different perspective, but it is consistent with an observation I made about a lot of US comments, people are quite happy for their country/government to engage in tactics (e.g. bullying, industrial espionage even against partners...) that they are enraged if others (E.g. China) do it. Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument.

[csense]

> "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others"

Doesn't work. We opened trade to China in the '70s. They took advantage of us, stealing IP, manipulating currency, paying their people terrible wages, crapping all over the environment. We let their companies freely in the US, they very severely restricted US business ventures in China.

Detroit, a former shining city in the industrial heartland, is now a bandit infested ruin.

In the US, a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support owning a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, a car, and multiple children.

For me, coming from the Rust Belt, it's incredibly, painfully obvious that globalization's basically destroyed the US economy. I'm constantly amazed to meet well-meaning, intelligent people who don't seem to understand this fact.

[mleroy]

The Rust Belt's just one part of the story, not the whole US economy. Globalization actually created tons of wealth for the USA, but that money hasn't been spread around fairly. It's all piled up in coastal cities and with rich folks while factory towns got left behind. Cutting off global trade wouldn't fix anything - it would tank the overall economy while only helping a few powerful players pulling the strings. The real problem isn't trade deals; it's that the USA never properly invested the profits back into the communities that got hit hardest.

[someNameIG]

The US economy is the largest in the world, disposable income, both average and median, are highest and second highest respectively. Median income is 30-40% higher than comparable developed economies, and significant higher than China.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per...

Even industrial output the US is second highest, and it's closer to first place than second.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sec...

And supporting a whole family on a single income well was a very narrow window of time, and it required the US to have no real economic competitors. Where US workers had no competition on the world stage, but their output was sold on the world stage. So even if the US go isolationist that's still never coming back.

[mcv]

> And supporting a whole family on a single income well was a very narrow window of time, and it required the US to have no real economic competitors.

But then how were other countries able to have this while having economic competitors?

[nly]

A lot of this is just social change from the womens liberation movement. Women went to work and the market adapted. Now, in the main, you need 2 incomes to run a home.

It's worse in a lot of countries where tax policy disadvantages the pre-1960 norm like the UK.

[someNameIG]

Some places relied on other ways to make money (here in Australia it was comodoties). A lot is just social change to two income households, and it's main contributor to living costs was housings. Two people bringing in money ,means that households can pay more for a mortgage or rent, driving up costs.

[tim333]

>In the US, a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support owning a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, a car, and multiple children

A lot of the change there is not down to China but limiting the ability to build a cheap house through nimbyism and regulation and then competition from other dual income / high earners bidding everything up. You could fix it by allocating everyone a bit of land and letting them build whatever on it even if it was just a shack. It's not really trade that's the main problem.

[danaris]

What? No; the problem is vastly more attributable to the tremendous transfer of wealth from the working classes to the wealthy that has occurred over the past 50 years.

Look at any graph of earnings by quintile over time, or of income or wealth inequality today, and you'll see that the fact that builders can't cut corners and sell us crappy houses and apartments that will fall down around our ears is far from the primary reason we have trouble affording things today.

[Whoppertime]

Wealth is not zero sum though. LeBron James being great at basketball doesn't make you any worse at basketball. Jeff Bezos starting a company in his garage selling books online that became one of the biggest in the world worth many billions doesn't make me any poorer. Financial transactions are win-win. That is why there is a mutual thank you when making a purchase. The cafe owner would rather have my 2$ instead of coffee in their pot. I would rather have coffee in my cup instead of 2$. If neither of us thought we would not be better off the transaction would not happen

[photonthug]

For the people who want ^this guy to shut up but haven't engaged.. which part of the above is wrong? I can see hyperbole of "bandit infested ruin" pushing some buttons but otoh it's seems likely that crime is connected to general economic health.

[matwood]

> which part of the above is wrong?

Rust Belt isn't the entire US economy. Blaming where the US is today on globalization is probably 30 years too late.

The US economy has created enormous wealth. Domestic policies on how to spread around the prosperity to all citizens is where the US failed. Think more of what Sanders and AOC talk about, not bringing back factories that will be 99% automated anyway. For one example, how can the most prosperous country in the world have a majority of its bankruptcies tied to medical debt? And somehow people want to blame China or globalization or some other boogie man?

[tene80i]

It’s right and wrong. Globalisation has hurt the rust belt, but it’s also allowed for much cheaper goods, which many people have enjoyed. It’s also made other economies much richer, which has allowed them to purchase U.S. goods (China being an immense iPhone market, for example). It’s not zero sum. If the world economy grows, and the USA holds onto a massive slice of that growing pie, then the USA wins - as it has been doing.

And the part about life just being totally unaffordable now isn’t really to do with China stealing from the US - housing is catastrophically expensive in many countries, and is more to do with how it has evolved as an asset class than trade relationships.

[Whoppertime]

Doesn't that balance out in the end though? People in Detroit go from working at an automobile factory to working as a service worker at a local restaurant or retail store and their incomes go down massively, meaning all they can afford to buy is cheap crap from China sold at their local dollar store or discount retailer. They would rather have the old purchasing power and old retail options, especially since inflation has eroded a lot of those low prices.

[AlecSchueler]

For me the idea of "stealing IP" in a society like China seems to miss the entire point of what they're doing and seems to fall short of having respect for cultural differences. What we think of as "respecting intellectual property rights" can also be seen as "hoarding property" which is antithetical to communist ideals.

[lunarlull]

> In the US, a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support owning a house with a yard, a non-working spouse, a car, and multiple children.

That was never sustainable in the long run and no one can bring that back.

[tasuki]

Why was it not sustainable? Clearly the houses were there, and the non-working spouses, and the car and the children...

[renata]

Well, we can't count on the entire rest of the world having all their factories bombed and being the only nation with reasonable manufacturing capability all the time.

[lunarlull]

It was the US benefiting from its position on the world stage as to why that was possible. The US was never and is not going to retain it's position on the world stage, and indeed under Trump it is radically declining.

The US is going to normalize with other western nations as we enter a multi-polar world.

The problem is Republicans don't accept that and think they can return to the 1950s.

[matwood]

I agree that the Rust Belt has had it rough, but it is not the entire US economy. I won't argue that people saw the future in the 70s, but those jobs were/are going away to automation regardless (and they are certainly not coming back). It's better to not be reliant on them now. In hindsight globalization was right move. And even if it wasn't, trying to blame the current US issues on globalization is 30 years too late.

Statistically the US manufactures more than it ever has on a $ amount, and is the #2 manufacturer in the world. Until recently, the US economy was the envy of the world. The trade situation the US setup did and does work, and along with other policies, led to enormous prosperity that was just unevenly distributed.

Where the US failed, and mostly around GOP and now Trump policies, is not spreading the growing prosperity to more of its citizens. Given this enormous prosperity where is universal healthcare, free/low cost college, UBI, etc...?

Unfortunately, the people who really need these policies have mostly voted against them for decades. Their anger is legitimate, but it's misplaced. Being angry at "globalization" or "illegals" or pick a group is a misdirection fed by years of AM radio and Fox News. Now we are seeing the cycle continue, but this time the US economy may really be destroyed.

[_t9ow]

Since your comment is comparing the US with China, maybe a bit of "whataboutism" is warranted here.

> stealing IP

Edward Snowden's leaks reveal that the US engages in wide-scale economic espionage. Additionally, the US also uses extra-territorial means of coercion to acquire cutting-edge technology -- see e.g. the Alstom case.

> manipulating currency

For many decades the US has been able to print money like a madman while the rest of the world absorbs the costs by virtue of the USD being the primary reserve currency globally. The US is also not above strong-arming its allies into appreciating their own currencies to boost American exports -- see the Plaza Accord, which partly contributed to Japan's subsequent Lost Decades.

> paying their people terrible wages

China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty in the last 20 years. In the US wages have remained stagnant for the working class over the same period, if not longer. Frustration among the working class -- which is entirely justified and understandable, by the way -- is probably one of the reasons why Trump was re-elected.

> crapping all over the environment

Chinese cities today are mostly clean and quiet, increasingly powered by renewable energy with more and more electric vehicles driven on the roads. The Chinese are also undertaking massive greening projects, such as the Great Green Wall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China) On a per-capita basis the Chinese emit far less carbon dioxide than Americans do.

The US, especially when compared to almost any other developed country, is in no moral position to be sanctimonious about environmental issues.

Don't blame other countries -- China or not -- for America's own catastrophic, chronic failure in leadership and subpar policymaking, especially when America has enjoyed so many entrenched advantages for so many decades (and still does).

[tasuki]

I think csense is engaging in good faith discussion. The proper response is an explanation, not downvotes.

[photonthug]

> Trust is not important if they are afraid of you .. Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument.

I've noticed this also, having spent a lot of time in both places. Some would say this is part of the American national character, and it's the darker side of hard-nosed individualistic cowboys, etc. The famous opening speech of Patton comes to mind here:

> When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big league ball players, the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. Now, I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed.

There's at least some truth to this and the mean-spirited arrogance/strength in the rest of the speech being in line with national character, I think it has to be admitted. This seems like the guy was certainly never cut out to be a diplomat or act with moderation, and maybe most Americans aren't. That said though.. maybe a deeper issue is that suffering (economic or otherwise) changes people. Makes them merely hypocrtical in the best case, aggravated and mean on average, or in the worst case positively cruel. A lot of America has not been ok for a long time now.

[chrome111]

Americans are taught at a very young age about Manifest Destiny, the notion when starting in the East that America has a right all the way to the West. While events like Trail of Tears are mentioned, they're downplayed during early school years and not brought up again later when kids may be able to form an opinion. Essentially, winning is ingrained into the American mindset and is the driving force behind almost everything - this helps when making companies big and even bigger, but also mutual growth hard to fathom. Current US policy does feel very American. Seems like a make-or-break moment for the American model itself, and if it breaks there'll need to be a change starting from the early age education/propaganda.

[gmerc]

Which is why China doesn’t need to do anything but reliably trade right now and take the US market share.

[safety1st]

When people say that China will replace the US as the world's largest buyer of exports, I always wonder what planet they're living on.

China does not WANT to do this. They have tons of protectionism. They give tons of preference to their own firms and protect their domestic market from foreign companies. This enables their firms to grow strong. This is a strategy which has been practiced by many many developing nations. They can't live without it and don't want to.

Why does gmerc think that China is going to rewrite its entire economic policy in order to take "market share?" We usually use that term to mean, you are selling stuff and want to sell to more customers because you make more money. In this context however we are talking about BUYING more stuff - why would it be sane for China to dominate the act of buying everything it can on the planet? (At the inevitable erosion of its manufacturing base - just like what happened to the USA when it opened up its markets.)

I mean you can think whatever you want about Trump and his actions, but it just makes zero sense to think that China will step in and fill the old role of the US here, when doing so is a polar opposite from their current trade strategy and would probably collapse their economy. And that gets to the real elephant in the room, which is that no one wants to do America's "old job" anymore. No one else wants to be the ubiquitous buyer of everything with big trade deficits all over the place, the vast majority of countries on earth defend their domestic markets and preference their local firms more than pre-Trump America did - exactly what are these new alliances that are going to arise, when everyone wants to sell to other countries, and no one wants to buy?

I happen to live in a country whose #1 export market was the USA and is being slapped with some of the largest tariffs. Time will tell of course but at the moment they pretty much just seem to be fucked and all they are saying is they are ready to come to the table and negotiate with the US as soon as possible. There just doesn't seem to be a ton of demand for their exports elsewhere - it's not like every country on earth isn't out there pimping its exports to anyone who will listen, pretty much all the time. If China or the EU had a burning need for a couple hundred billion dollars more of shellfish or textiles or what have you, they'd already be buying it.

[Nathanba]

>Trust is not important if they are afraid of you

I understand that argument I've never seen it spelled out by anyone other than me. I only brought it up as a last effort to explain the possible thinking behind these actions. It still won't make sense because even if you believe that you are the top dog and you can effortlessly bully others then you'd have to realize that you won't be the top dog in every situation all the time everywhere at the same time. There will be many instances where others who previously leaned your way for free will now look to get paid for leaning your way.

[giardini]

cycomanic says>"Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument"<

While they may "talk the talk", Europe doesn't "Walk the walk"! Europe has strong tariffs on imports. The USA is now simply equalizing the situation. Here's an example:

Automobile Tariffs by Country 2025: put your cursor on a country to see its automobile tariff. European tariffs on autos are roughly four times those of the USA. While you're there you can look up the "sales tax" too!

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/automobil...

European companies have had tariffs on USA products for decades. Those tariffs protect and maintain industries within a country. The USA failed to maintain that protection: the USA lost jobs and harmed industry which guts an economy. Meanwhile, for example, Germany protected it's auto industry with tariffs on cars from abroad.

My feeling is that "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

There's no doubt that the "Law of Comparative Advantage"(LCA) in economics is a valid argument for trade. However, the LCA is almost always argued in the absence of externalities: costs generated by use of the LCA are usually not taken into account when examining a full economy: job losses, industry shrinkage and failure, etc.

[throwaway473825]

That's a bad example. The US already had higher tariffs on vehicles if you include the chicken tax.

[giardini]

Thanks for this bit of history that I was unaware of. Note that the chicken tax applies to light trucks however.

[sdenton4]

Yeah, that's an idiotic take...

The US has benefited massively from soaking up the best brains globally. That's not going to keep happening; I have plenty of colleagues already who are refusing to travel to the US. We may well even swing into brain drain as Trump et al move closer to executing their cultural revolution.

Meanwhile, all those other countries will start trading more with each other. The US stands to be left out. Won't happen overnight, but Trump is pissing away the advantages. When the dollar isn't the global currency anymore things will really start to hurt.

[eddythompson80]

It's an idiotic take I agree. However, I don't think the US has benefited massively from soaking the best brains globally because of its foreign or trade policies. Most dominant voices about US foreign policy and foreign business interest has always been characterized by aggression and exploitation.

I highly doubt people were ok with that because the US had low tariffs on their countries exports to the US.

[Whoppertime]

I heard people saying BLM and Covid were cultural revolutions that would lead to brain drain under Joe Biden. It was hype. Politicians who marched with BLM in the summer of 2020 by 2023 were saying they were never in favor of defunding the police

[sebmellen]

Devil’s advocate:

If you (the US) massively subsidize the world order through your financial markets, military defense, and foreign aid, it’s only fair that you get to take advantage of your position.

Historically, the US has done this at the expense of its working class. Now there is a populist feeling that we are owed a long due “payback” for our generosity.

The Bernie/AOC left believe the payback is owed by our elites, who enriched themselves by austerity and hollowing out our industrial base.

The Trump/MAGA right believe the payback is owed by other countries — freeloaders that have benefited from our technology, military defense, and foreign aid while simultaneously being net exporters to the US.

To the latter crowd, the kind of “bullying” behavior you describe is actually the equivalent of a gentle giant who never stood up for himself finally deciding that he won’t take any more shit.

Edit: To any downvoters, please comment with where you think I’m wrong. I’m not defending any policy, just providing what I believe is an accurate representation of the populist American mindset described in the parent comment.

[lunarlull]

> To the latter crowd, the kind of “bullying” behavior you describe is actually the equivalent of a gentle giant who never stood up for himself finally deciding that he won’t take any more shit.

Assuming this generous interpretation is accurate, then it's a problem of ignorance of the people holding this view. Characterizing other countries as 'freeloaders' is exactly that - ignorance.

[AlecSchueler]

Also, what about all the coups, military operations, political pressure etc etc? Was that the gentle giant?

[tock]

America is the richest country in the world. That is the payback. Yet somehow the working class is screwed.

People don't want to admit wealth distribution is the problem because that would make them "communists". It's an emotional response. I'm scared how far they take it.

[sebmellen]

Right, and I think that’s largely true.

Whether or not the “right wing working class” are right in their root cause analysis, the domestic situation in the US is catastrophic enough to demand explanation:

  “If we are the richest country on earth, why can’t I afford a house and healthcare?”

Answer 1: You are being taken advantage of by wealthy elites within your country!

Answer 2: The whole world has made Americans front the bill for a regime of global peace, security, and a trusted reserve currency, at the cost of you, the American worker!

Depending on which answer you choose, and which camp you ally with, your worldview will differ.

[tock]

I know. There is no reason to believe in #2. Its an emotional response. And so you cant change it. Just like you cant use logic with a flat earther. And that's scary for the rest of the world. I just hope no wars happen.

[fspeech]

Housing and healthcare are the two things that have little to do with trade. Housing affordability is almost entirely policy driven. In a "free" market (quoted because the definition typically doesn't take into account the necessity of a functional society to maintain property rights and values, just ask Detroit), housing affordability is entirely dependent on one's relative income and propensity to spend, i.e. you can have high absolute income (say in NYC) and still find you desired housing unaffordable. I think people intuitively understand this. Healthcare costs are more complicated but is also almost entirely a domestic issue.

[billy99k]

"People don't want to admit wealth distribution is the problem because that would make them "communists"."

If you are referring to taking wealth by force from people that earned it and giving to people that didn't earn it, yes it's 'communist'. There's nothing emotional about a methodology that has failed over and over again.

[budududuroiu]

Well, we’ve been going through wealth redistribution towards the “elites”, and no one batted an eye.

China popped the real estate bubble, collapsing entire industry giants and making the “elites” swallow the financial downturn. Literally allowing the “poor” to refinance their homes on the back of the “rich”, because they believe housing isn’t for speculation, but for living in.

Tariffs without windfall profits tax will be further wealth redistribution, from the poor to the wealthy

[oblio]

Or, alternatively, it's called "taxes" and "wealth redistribution".

High inequalities is proven to be bad for development, so clearly there is a point where people have too much and it's harmful to society.

Ergo it would be immoral to allow some to hoard wealth infinitely, just because they can.

[tock]

Politicians should just come out and say this to the people. Oh you can't afford a house? Oh you cant afford healthcare? But we are the richest country in the world. And the system is fair. It means you didn't earn it. Duh.

[lunarlull]

Most of those people didn't earn it directly, but via exploiting people working under them and not paying them a fair share for their work.

[cloverich]

Communism is control of the economy via government owning the businesses. What you are describing is taxes in a free market system. They are not the same thing, and being convinced they are is the majority of the problem.

[AlecSchueler]

> If you are referring to taking wealth by force from people that earned it and giving to people that didn't earn it, yes it's 'communist'.

Like taking money generated by the labourer and giving it to the company owners to share with their idle families? And threatening unemployment and precariousness/homelessness for those who disagree? This seems to have failed again indeed

[mcv]

> If you are referring to taking wealth by force from people that earned it and giving to people that didn't earn it, yes it's 'communist'.

No, that's capitalist. That's literally the core of capitalism.

[cachehit]

>If you are referring to taking wealth by force from people that earned it and giving to people that didn't earn it, yes it's 'communist'

No, it's taxation. A pretty common phenomenon.

[mindslight]

> freeloaders that have benefited from our technology, military defense, and foreign aid while simultaneously being net exporters to the US.

I'm not trying to jump on you for having captured it, but the problem is that this is wholly nonsensical - the repayment for benefiting from our technology and military defense IS the net exporting to the US (via holding our currency). That "logic" is still based on having one foot in the paradigm of the financial engineering puppetmasters where getting real physical goods is somehow a liability rather than a benefit!

For sure, this enviable position has had a corrosive effect on our economy. But the inability to deal with that has been wholly down to self-inflicted policy wounds of previous decades - chiefly led by the Republican party marketing a game of fake "fiscal responsibility" whereby the government is prevented from taking deliberate action to mitigate the displacement of industry and workers, while the increased (but now centralized) wealth from offshoring (and other technological/economic gains) was merely handed over to the banksters in the form of low-interest loans that went into driving up the asset bubble.

[sebmellen]

Best comment in the whole thread. And thank you. This is a useful and clear analysis.

[f33d5173]

The US has always been incredibly mercenary with their investment. If there was a way of squeezing more blood from the stone a previous president would have done it. You learned about economic policy yesterday. Now you think that picking tariffs by throwing darts can do better than seasoned economic expert trying to maximize benefit to the US. It's just laughable.

[sebmellen]

Did I ever defend a particular industrial policy? No. You misread my comment.

My comment was intended to give the GP poster insight into the mindset of Americans who revel in the “bullying” behavior they described.

But one point of inquiry — how are foreign aid programs like USAID mercenary? Even if they are CIA fronts, it’s hard to argue that they are in any way economically extractive.

[cmurf]

Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook? It wouldn't surprise me, Trump had Laura Loomer at the White House and 1/2 an hour later three members of the National Secure Council had been fired.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2025/01/0...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/trump-nsc-fir...

A central problem with this administration is it's headed by a psychopath, who has a long track record of being an untrustworthy liar. Could he pick an economics team that can actually make hard choices that are generally better for America? It's possible. But it's also possible these are just more kooks, or corrupt people looking to grift, or people who think like Peter Thiel, that democracy is over and needs to be replaced by a monarch.

My take? Impeach and remove Trump from office. Do it now. If the country wants these kinds of policies, they need to do it through the Congress. Not through a president, sane or insane.

[walterbell]

> Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook?

https://financialpost.com/news/stephen-miran-economist-trump...

> Currently a senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital Management LP and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, Miran holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and his dissertation advisor was Martin Feldstein, an eminent American economist who chaired the CEA during the Reagan administration.

> Miran.. points to Trump’s application of tariffs on China in 2018-2019, which he argues “passed with little discernible macroeconomic consequence.” He adds that during that time the U.S. dollar rose to offset the macroeconomic impact of the tariffs and resulted in significant revenue for the U.S. Treasury.. “The effective tariff rate on Chinese imports increased by 17.9 percentage points from the start of the trade war in 2018 to the maximum tariff rate in 2019,” the report said. “As the financial markets digested the news, the Chinese renminbi depreciated against the dollar over this period by 13.7 per cent, so that the after-tariff USD import price rose by 4.1 per cent.”

[mcv]

It's clearly the Bernie/AOC left who are correct here. The US forced this world order on the rest of the world, and massively benefitted from it, so the payback is not owed by the rest of the world who had this forced on them (though they benefitted too) but by the wealthy elite, who benefitted by far the most from it.

Look at the number of multibillionaires the US has acquired over the past 40 years. The trillion dollar megacorps. The many millionaires in Congress. Those are the people who owe payback to the American public. But those are also the people who control the American public, control their news, and feed them misinformation.

[rsynnott]

> Europeans seem to be much more susceptible to an "if you don't want it to be done to you don't do it to others" argument.

I mean, in the specific realm of trade wars, that’s probably more correct, because the game theory of the thing tends to make retaliating against the aggressor nigh-inevitable, particularly in a “country v world” situation.

[owebmaster]

> I'm tempted to think (hope? dream?) that the markets and trade will rebound if all this chaos makes American politics swing back

The pump'n'dump scheme against Ukraine will forever change how small countries see the US support for democracy, even if it changes back to the previous status-quo.

[gonzo41]

The US treatment of Ukraine is having a massive impact on how everyone thinks about security.

All the US had to do was supply it's old weapons to Ukraine whilst replenishing it's stock (creating jobs in America) and things would have been fine. Now we're all in a world were Europeans are openly talking about developing nuclear weapons. Taiwan is totally on it's own, and Greenland is worried about being annexed.

There's real trouble coming.

[8note]

canada is also worried about being annexed, and that nato partners wont heed the call to article 5 against a US invasion and naval blockade

[CapricornNoble]

> All the US had to do was supply it's old weapons to Ukraine whilst replenishing it's stock (creating jobs in America) and things would have been fine.

Well, no, it's not fine, partly because we can't replenish our stocks fast enough. Ukraine is consuming nearly the entire planet's production capacity of Patriot missiles, eating enough of our ATACMS stockpile that it makes Combatant Commanders nervous, and more. To say nothing of the argument "supply Ukraine for as long as it takes, even if that means indefinitely" never made any sense; actions taken without a clear, achievable end goal in mind are just a waste of resources.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/d...

https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/us-defence-industrial-base-...

[dboreham]

Quick note that Europeans have had nuclear weapons since 1945.

[ttyprintk]

Europe is openly talking about its own cooperative nuclear umbrella. Trump is correct that he deserves 100% of credit/blame for that, taking the heat for Putin.

[petre]

It will be done by your friends the French, even if not to everyone. Poland is very keen on it.

In fact they are reopening and massively developing an airbase that will be hosting nukes near Colmar, 200 km from the German border. That's a 6 minute flight for a Dassault Rafale.

[refurb]

It sounds like you’re arguing for the military industrial complex.

“The Ukraine war is great because it creates US jobs through weapons manufacturing. Yeah, we might get our hair a bit mussed with the hundreds of thousands of deaths, but net-net it’s a win!”

[throwaway5752]

In the end, countries are nuanced enough to understand American political dynamics. They see Orbans, they see Le Pens, they see Trump, and they know what is behind it. I am quite sure that Ukraine did not expect anything else from the Trump faction of the Republican party. His victory was not unlikely and he is a simple creature. If different factions win, they will be eager to work with America again, with less trust and reliance.

Realistically, it is for the best if countries are resilient to US failure. It will make Americans generationally poorer, but the world will be better off for it.

[elevaet]

> It will make Americans generationally poorer, but the world will be better off for it.

The world will become more resilient, but this could easily be a lose-lose for USA and other democratic nations.

[MegaButts]

> In the end, countries are nuanced enough to understand American political dynamics.

Is that why Ukraine agreed to the Budapest Memorandum?

[jdeow]

You are just assuming Attention craving/seeking Trump types don't exist in every country in the world.

If Trump and the rest of his podcasting/influencer buffoon class, can rise to power in the US riding on what is valued by Attention Economics, then the same can repeat in every country in the world.

The root cause is not changing cause the Algos have created a game that favor those who love Attention and will do whatever it takes to get it and keep it.

[walterbell]

https://www.retailcouncil.org/u-s-hits-185-nations-with-tari...

> No new tariffs were announced for Canada. Canada and Mexico’s exemption for USMCA/CUSMA qualifying goods was maintained. However, 25% tariffs on non-USMCA compliant Canadian goods, Canadian steel and aluminum, Canadian autos and parts, and the 10% tariff on Canadian energy exports remain in place.. there are signs that negotiators on both sides are trying to steer Canada-US trade to a more productive process of an expedited renegotiation of the Canada-US-Mexico Trade Agreement (CUSMA).

More context on US trade policy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43589350

[graeme]

So the tariffs were calculated based on dividing goods trade deficit by overall goods trade.

If you run that formula for Canada and Mexico, the number would be LOWER than the tariffs already imposed.

So they had to leave Canada and Mexico off to keep things looking consistent.

You can confirm here from USTR stats: https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/americas/canada#:~:text=C...

[walterbell]

https://www.ft.com/content/96bc1b74-14dd-47ab-8bbd-1add97a2a...

> both leaders claim their approaches have helped them this week avoid what Trump calls “liberation day” tariffs.. Mexican officials on Thursday said the strategy had borne fruit and they would focus on getting an even better deal. Economy minister Marcelo Ebrard said: “It's a great achievement, I’d say, from the point of view of where we started not long ago that there would be no exemptions.” .. Mexico remains upbeat, with [President] Sheinbaum on Thursday trying to lure companies to invest in USMCA-compliant production in the country. “We think that with the dialogue we’ve established there are the conditions to have a better deal,” she said.

[graeme]

You've completely ignored what I wrote. The formula the white house used to set tariffs would result in lower tariffs for Canada and Mexico. If both countries were included in the formula Trump would have to cut announced tariffs on both countries.

Do you dispute this? It's trivial to calculate.

[clipsy]

You're making the mistake of believing that anyone left in the MAGA camp is arguing in good faith.

[walterbell]

You're disagreeing with statements by the President of Mexico, describing the result of ongoing negotiations?

Canada and Mexico share a physical border with USA, which has already resulted in unique (i.e. unrelated to the math of 180+ other countries which don't physically border USA) tariffs tailored to border security goals, under national security emergency directives which overrode USMCA.

USMCA has been historically gamed by international manufacturers seeking more favorable terms for products destined to the US market. As stated by the leadership of both Mexico and Canada, USMCA will need to be renegotiated to address issues identified by all three parties, which would then reduce the need to invoke the emergency-power tariffs that have been deployed against 180+ countries.

[brookst]

To the extent markets recover it will be because there’s confidence that exposure to bizarre and unpredictable behavior from the US has been reduced.

EU / China trade pacts, China / California, Mexico / EU. People have to patch around the mistaken over-reliance on sanity from the US. It’ll happen, not sure if it’ll take a few weeks or a few years though.

[ttyprintk]

Oh, high quality will recover. Biotech will recover. It’s possible Walmart stock doesn’t recover. Auto makers will be interesting.

[petre]

If you remember he blew up TTIP, TTP/TTPA during his first mandate.

[ModernMech]

The people who voted for these policies have to feel a sufficient amount of pain from them to be sure they won't just vote for them again as soon as they get the chance. Most people who voted for Trump in 2024 would vote for him again if he ran for a 3rd term. Nobody can consider America a reliable partner until that isn't a laughable possibility again.

[bdelmas]

I think that those in command are also waiting for the next President to undo all that but it is going to have a tremendous effect for a decade or more. Hopefully for the US they won't go in a similar crisis like the UK is going through...

Cutting off countries like Japan or Taiwan like that when we know their geopolitical situation with China and how critical their economy is to the US is quite crazy.

[baranul]

Things are easier to break than they are to fix. The next president, if there will be another, will not be able to easily glue the pieces back together.

[swat535]

Yeah, this is the core issue. How can any ally fully trust the U.S. when major foreign policy commitments can be reversed every 4 years? One administration signs on, the next tears it up.

It's starting to look like U.S. agreements aren't really with the country, but with whoever happens to be in office. US allies is isolating itself and it's allies are going to hedge. The trend is already starting and it's going to be hard to reverse. Restoring that trust isn’t just a matter of electing the "right" leadership, either, at this juncture, I think that it would require institutional reforms and a consensus on foreign policy that transcends the electoral cycle.

I'm not going to cheer for the "downfall of US", but America is doing it to itself.

[OJFord]

> Hopefully for the US they won't go in a similar crisis like the UK is going through...

Err.. do tell about the UK's larger crisis than US'?

[Gregaros]

I’ve been seeing people call this GEXIT, or global exit.

[OJFord]

As a comparison to Brexit? At what point even momentarily was that in a worse situation, nevermind as an ongoing matter?

[losvedir]

Are you pretty young? The narrative when it was happening was pretty catastrophic. I remember reading about people not being able to get prescriptions, for example, because no one knew how imports worked.

I don't know how things panned out, but the discussions in the early days around Brexit were absolutely on par or even worse than what we're seeing in these two days of discussions around tariffs.

[OJFord]

I don't know what 'pretty young' is, apart from condescending, but I voted in it, so I remember as well as you do I imagine.

Regardless of contemporaneous comparisons, the up-thread comment I initially replied to suggested there was some ongoing worse 'crisis' in the UK than the current situation in the US, if they meant to refer to Brexit it was not clear at all, regardless of whether anyone things that's an ongoing worse situation. (Except that the fact it's not clear really suggests it isn't...)

[eddythompson80]

What? The didn't happen, or it's not how it happened. Are you pretty young to remember Brexit?

The UK voted for Brexit in 2016, but it was up to the UK itself to invoke it with the EU. They took almost 4 years to do it in January of 2020 after 4 years of arguing about it with a transition period and trade talks with the EU until the end of 2020. It wasn't a surprise and "no one knew how imports worked". Yeah people online made all sort of wild hyperbolic scenarios, but trade was unaffected until the end of 2020. There were shortages in the UK around that time, but I wonder if you remember what happened shortly after January 31st of 2020?

The prescription drug shortages is still a problem in the UK. It's not because no one still knows how imports work in the UK, 5 years after Brexit. It's because the overall imports and exports in the UK has been falling since Brexit. Because the UK economy hasn't been doing great. Brexit, COVID, and then Ukraine/Russian energy dependency came in a pretty bad time for the UK.

[rsynnott]

Note that these tariffs largely don’t take effect til the 9th. That’s when we start seeing what the second-order effects are.

[rsynnott]

Currently, Trump’s tariffs have kinda broken the stock markets, and caused some difficult-to-measure economic damage (investments will have been delayed or cancelled, that sort of thing). If, tomorrow, Trump chokes on a well-done steak, or Congress puts him back in his box (remember, his ability to do _anything_ with tariffs is entirely within the gift of Congress), or otherwise the tariffs go away, then the markets will pretty much spring back, and the economic hit will be small enough that it’s hard to measure.

While estimates of the damage done by Brexit are of course very politically sensitive, nearly everyone agrees that some substantial damage has been done, particularly to trade and jobs (one estimate has the UK with _over 2 million_ fewer jobs today than it would otherwise have, Goldman Sachs says that the UK economy is 5% smaller than it ‘should’ be, etc etc)

[makeitdouble]

Reading the parent's comment I was expecting the UK GDP to have been plunging since Brexit, but that's not the case apparently[0]. Some sectors clearly profited from it, compensating for those who went down the drain.

GDP isn't everything and from the outside the UK feel like in a very bad place, but I wonder what's the metric that really captures that status. Inequalities aren't getting that much wider as well.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gbr/uni...

[bdelmas]

There is a lot of data to talk about that's why I linked the video directly in the other comment. Maybe check it out. For the GDP it may not look bad but compared to other countries and especially the US, the UK is going through what we call a "lost decade". Their GDP should be +25% higher than right now... That's just one (huge) metric talked about in the video.

[mike_hearn]

Yup. Sadly, discussion of Brexit on HN is trash tier. Almost every claim about it you'll find here is completely wrong. Not in the sense of differing values or priorities, but in a "this is totally made up" kind of way. It's really concerning that so many people's understanding of the UK and Europe have suffered such a huge rupture with reality. The map is not the territory!

Leaving the EU had no effect on the British economy. Not positive, not negative. Even the trade balance with the EU merely continued along its long term trend, so apparently the single market wasn't delivering any value in the end. The closest thing you can find to an economic impact was the currency dump that happened the moment the result was called, but the economy did fine in the post-referendum years and so those traders who panicked just took a bath and the currency recovered later. Not that a currency devaluation is such a bad thing for the UK anyway, its exports could use the help.

Even some non-economic impacts failed to materialize, in both directions. The UK rejoined the Horizon research programme (supposedly a "cherry" that would be lost), but also the reduction in immigration that voters were promised didn't happen either, in fact immigration went into overdrive.

A lot of people who support the EU don't realize any of this, partly because the news doesn't report on things that don't happen so they never hear about it. But mostly it's because they conflate predictions with reality. For example, there's someone saying in this thread that "the narrative was pretty catastrophic" followed by "I don't know how things panned out". And when I pointed out this lack of impact less than two weeks ago here, I got a reply that cited another pile of predictions as a refutation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43469356

It's a systemic problem that crops up in other areas too. During COVID modeling predictions were regularly repeated as if they'd already happened, and you see the same mental slippage in climate change discourse. The line between "we think this might happen", "this will happen" and "this has already happened" blurs to nothing.

[pmags]

Can you provide some citations / documentation of your claims about "no effect"?

As a non-EU / non-UK reader I went searching for more detailed analysis after reading your post. The first detailed analysis I found was the UK Office for Budget Responsibility's Brexit Analysis. [1]

The OBR's analysis suggests outcomes like the following (all quoted from that assessment) that seem to suggest some degree of negative economic impact:

* The post-Brexit trading relationship between the UK and EU, as set out in the ‘Trade and Cooperation Agreement’ (TCA) that came into effect on 1 January 2021, will reduce long-run productivity by 4 per cent relative to remaining in the EU.

* Both exports and imports will be around 15 per cent lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU.

[1] https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/the-economy-forecast/brexi...

[mike_hearn]

With respect, argh! Lol.

That link is neither analysis nor reporting on outcomes. That's more predictions. This is the exact problem I'm talking about!

To analyze outcomes you must look at the actual data. There's a report that does so here but you can look up the raw data too if you prefer:

https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Perspectives_5...

From the summary:

"Contrary to initial concerns, Brexit has not had a major detrimental effect on UK–EU trade.

● Trade data doesn’t support the Office for Budget Responsibility’s claims that Brexit has caused significant negative impacts on the UK economy.

● Data from 2019 to 2022 indicates that the trade in both goods and services between the UK and EU hasn’t shown a discernible Brexit effect."

You can look up more recent numbers but the story hasn't changed.

I'd really like to understand the psychology of this phenomenon better. I don't mean this as any personal criticism because it's good that you're asking, but the fact that every time I bring this prediction/reality conflation up I get a rebuttal with more predictions in it is fascinating.

[bdelmas]

Well before what's happening now the US still was doing very strong on the economy (plus their advantage to be that big, their military advantage, them owning half of their continent, etc...). But with what is unfolding now...

If you want to know more about the current situation in the UK I would recommend this video [1]. His channel is amazing for geopolitical content.

[1] https://youtu.be/OTWDzMjgsEY?si=hxoB8ef_y2Qy4u0I

[Centigonal]

Some stats from this video:

- The UK has one of the worst homelessness problems in Europe, with about 1 in 50 Londoners experiencing homelessness.

- The UK economy stagnated for 10 years following 2008, resulting in a "lost decade"

- The median disposable income in the UK was slightly lower than the US and Norway before the GFC by 6-8%, not it's 16-20% behind.

IDK if I'd call this a crisis, i.e. people aren't rioting in the streets. That said, this is not the direction you want to be moving in as a developed country. The trend of people in formerly dominant countries electing leaders who keep making stupid own goals (increasing economic inequality, Brexit, gutting the NHS, gutting US foreign aid, tariff-pocalypse) is very worrying.

[card_zero]

Ten times? More like two times:

US population is around 340 000 000, 770 000 homeless.

UK population is around 68 000 000, 354 000 homeless. (Possibly calculated more inclusively.)

That's 0.23 % and 0.52 %.

(Numbers from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Kin... or more specifically from a govt department and a homelessness charity. The US figure "does not include those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own".)

[Centigonal]

Hey, so I was wrong in saying the UK has 10x the homelessness rate of the US. I used a stat from the video that "approximately one in fifty Londoners are now homeless." That's London, not the UK. Thanks for catching that -- I will update my post.

But also, uh, you're wrong too! Your numerator for the UK figure is actually an estimate for homeless people in England, while your denominator includes the whole UK.

[tdeck]

It's interesting that this video is so focused on productivity since 2008, when a worker's income has been decoupled from productivity for decades.

[OJFord]

If you can't give me any words that indicate what kind of crisis the UK is facing, while there's general agreement on 'Trump', 'tariffs', '(especially US) equities', 'the US dollar', 'global recession fears'... then I don't have time for your video recommendation.

[anigbrowl]

Brexit was pretty bad for the UK proportional to the size of their population/economy, and is still causing problems even though the initial dislocation is over. If you think it's a lesser crisis, you could just say that. I haven't done the numbers to make an exact comparison, but they both have the qualities of being being abrupt, severe, and self-inflicted.

[OJFord]

> If you think it's a lesser crisis, you could just say that.

I do, but the principal reason I didn't say that is that I had no idea it's what the commenter I replied to was referring to.

'Brexit' feels mostly completely irrelevant / not a topic of concern or debate since at least the beginning of the pandemic five years ago. The vote was almost a decade ago. 'If bdelmas thinks it's like Brexit, they could just say that', to paraphrase your own comment.

[Symbiote]

Britain took 4 years to negotiate and prepare for the new trading arrangement with the EU. It wasn't all smooth, but they did things like massively expand customs facilities at sea and airports to allow for the new inspections, train up inspectors for animal and plant imports. It gave time for people to move, companies to move their HQ, set up new warehouses, etc. Both sides were clear that the arrangement wouldn't be changed back with a change of government — the EU had no patience for that, opposition parties in the UK said they wouldn't aim for it either.

The USA hasn't done any of that, so the situation at this stage isn't the same.

Weeks after Brexit happened, when Covid started, EU governments quickly moved their focus to the pandemic. Since then, they've continued to tell Britain they aren't interested in reopening discussions so soon after new treaties were signed.

That's changed slightly with Russia/Ukraine/Trump, as the UK has positioned itself carefully between the USA and the rest of NATO.

All that time though, it remains a topic of debate in Britain since they haven't seen any of the promised benefits of Brexit. Some things have got worse, but I'd say it's generally a problem of stagnation, compared to improvements in comparable neighbouring countries.

[OJFord]

That's a good summary, I basically agree. It's hardly describing a current and ongoing 'crisis' that the US hopefully doesn't deteriorate from its present position to the level of, though, is it?

I think if I were American I would be longing for the day that <insert Trump thing> 'remains a topic of debate because we haven't seen the promised benefit of it'!

[lazyasciiart]

The vote didn’t implement anything. Britain didn’t actually leave the EU until 2020. Brexit is as of much concern in Britain, still, as Trump is - because it underlies their entire shaken economy. You think some tariffs are bad? Ok now what if Trump simultaneously tore up every trade agreement? And cancelled the visas of every European citizen in the country, who happened to make up 10% of the medical sector?

[OJFord]

Alright take 2020 then: year started $1.32/£, ended at 1.37. The world was shaken by SARS-nCoV-2019, but I do not remember us feeling particularly extra shaken by Brexit crisis.

That is not really relevant anyway, the up-thread suggestion was that there was some current ongoing crisis more significant than anything happening in the US. That user didn't even mention Brexit, but if that is what they meant, no, I assure you it's predominantly Trump and tax year end stuff in our news.

[lazyasciiart]

Oh, you’re actually British, how surprising. Perhaps it’s only still a topic among people who understood what was going to happen.

[darksaints]

This. There is no reason why any country should trust us anymore if entire trade relations can be destroyed by a presidential whim.

Even if Trump fell out of a window today and we got a pro-trade president tomorrow, we’re not fixing this damage for a very long time.

We probably would have to amend the constitution to insulate foreign policy from the whims of a single person if we want any chance of fixing this in our lifetime.

[Uvix]

It's already there in the Constitution - Article II, Section 2, Clause 2. Unfortunately other countries chose not to require things in writing and were happy with pinky promises that could be reneged.

[lreeves]

We (Canada) literally signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement for trade in 2020... with Donald Trump. Trump this February said "Who would ever sign a thing like this?" and proceeded to make up the story about fentanyl coming from Canada as a pretense to ignore this deal. So there was certainly more than a pinky promise.

Additionally your senate just signed law to repeal the tariffs against Canada specifically so I don't know what other receipts or paperwork you'd like here. Not that I expect Trump to adhere to that of course, but I've never heard the perspective of "well these weren't signed agreements" for things that clearly were.

[mtgentry]

Yep, he’s doing to other countries what he’s done to contractors, plumbers, and other tradesmen for years.

[vkou]

> Additionally your senate just signed law to repeal the tariffs against Canada specifically so I don't know what other receipts or paperwork you'd like here.

That bill won't pass the crazy house, but yes, CUSMA was signed law.

[ttyprintk]

There is a technicality in normal times, though: ratifying treaties negotiated by the President only need to pass the Senate.

[drowsspa]

I mean, most of international law and deals are basically pinky promises. But grown-ups are supposed to keep those pinky promises

[Terr_]

It doesn't require a constitutional amendment, we can just repeal the law [0] being used, which would ironically involve the same number of votes as keeping the law but slapping down Trump's particular usage of it. (That's now how it originally worked, but the easy-slapdown route got ruled unconstitutional.)

Military alliance stuff might be harder. Some stuff like NATO is supported by actual legislation, but other stuff was set up as a kind of gentleman's agreement with the US President-du-jour on the assumption that successors wouldn't be crazy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom...

[ceejayoz]

> we can just repeal the law [0] being used

Only with a veto-proof majority in both chambers.

[anigbrowl]

Maybe, but vetoes are politically very expensive. Even if he threatens to veto, Congress should still do it. Not doing obvious things because they might run into opposition/problems is a recipe for more and worse of the same.

[ceejayoz]

> Maybe, but vetoes are politically very expensive.

As are felony convictions, top secret docs in a bathroom at your house, sexual assault settlements, and the hundred other career-ending scandals the guy has survived without a scratch so far.

[ninkendo]

Congress is 55-ish% Trump’s party and 45-ish% everyone else. Nobody in the Trump party would ever, ever, ever do something Trump didn’t want. The entire party platform is basically “whatever Trump wants”. Anyone who disagrees was primaried out of existence long ago.

There is no congress any more, not as an independent body. There is Trump, and there is a body of people who will, in the majority, do anything Trump wants them to do, and is not independent in any way.

[8note]

theres 0 actual political cost to them.

trump doesnt need anything from congress, and probably wouldnt change tariff policy even after said law is passed in a veto-proof way

[Terr_]

Yes, just like I said: "which would ironically involve the same number of votes as keeping the law but slapping down Trump's particular usage of it."

Originally it wasn't veto-able (only needed a Concurrent Resolution of 50% in each house, no Presidential signature) but the Supreme Court ruled that part unconstitutional in the early 80s.

[vlovich123]

The president constitutionally doesn’t actually have this authority - the power to set tariffs is supposed to be exclusively the prerogative of the legislature, but Trump declares pro forma emergencies and the Republicans in power aren’t willing to check his power.

[bitmasher9]

Passing law that removes tariff authority from the president would be a good start to rebuilding trust.

[jmye]

The rest of the world would still be at the mercy of an untrustworthy government that is largely incapable of any semblance of long term thinking. To say nothing of the weirdos who regularly vote for that government and who they tend to elect.

[brookst]

I don’t think that would matter at all. Pass all the laws you want, when the head of the executive branch orders the CBP to collect tariffs, they will. We’ve long since left the rule of law.

[Jtsummers]

The US wasn't even in a crisis until 2025. We weren't in a stellar position (high deficits and debt, low unemployment but high underemployment). It was all recoverable before Trump started this trade war and doing things like cutting departments that actually brought in revenue.

[ekianjo]

> was all recoverable

The debt was never recoverable

[Jtsummers]

Well, I disagree but the current policies guarantee it's not recoverable so a debate would mostly be around hypotheticals. We're reducing revenue but not spending (or not enough to offset the reduction in revenue so the deficit will rise), so the debt will only continue to rise at an increasing rate.

Ironically, Trump has the record for the highest deficit ever in US history. He's on track to beat it though and with a reasonably strong economy when he took office (again, not an ideal economy, underemployment is a major issue, but not a weak economy by any stretch).

[ekianjo]

> Ironically, Trump has the record for the highest deficit ever in US history.

hardly relevant comment since all presidents left and right have been pushing the button to increase deficits (and congress is completely responsible as well for not trying to balance the budget) so this is a systemic problem that will bring the downfall of America no matter what. It's just a matter of time, and with that level of debt, the time bomb keeps ticking faster and faster.

[roxolotl]

It’s relevant because republicans campaign on it. If neither party claimed to be fiscally responsible I’d agree. However one does and isn’t. That makes the relative debt load under that party compared to the other fair game.

[lunarlull]

Can you share your understanding of what you think the debt actually is?

[t0lo]

On top of all of their other preexisting and pending crises..

[paxys]

The next president is going to be Trump. If people don't think that's at least a serious possibity they are extremely deluded about the situation the country is in right now.

[Vegenoid]

We have repeatedly seen Trump say something that sounds ridiculous, and his supporters say "that won't actually happen, and if it does I won't support it", and then he does it and his supporters support it. He has recently said he may try for another term as president, and confirmed "No, no I'm not joking".

If you don't take his threats seriously by now, and the willingness of the GOP to get behind whatever he wants, then you are not paying attention - it has happened over, and over, and over.

[smogcutter]

On NPR they ran a response quote from Ryan Zinke that was nominally against it, but if you read between the lines you can see them laying the foundation. It was something like “I draw a hard line at violating the constitution, that’s something I’ll never support. But also right now there are leftists and activist judges who think they can violate the constitution by taking power away from the executive”

He never directly spoke against a third term, just “violating the constitution”, and then named some enemies. It’s a long way off still, but you can see the groundwork being laid for something like “emergency measures to protect the constitution” if they decide that’s the way they want to go.

[lovecg]

Wouldn’t he have to get on the ballot in all the swing states at least? What if some states refuse to let him run? I can’t see California registering him for example, but that wouldn’t really matter of course.

[Vegenoid]

Only if he tries to get a 3rd term by a fair election. The more realistic way to it happening is by hijacking the electoral process. There are a number of ways to do this, such as by claiming there was fraud and thereby having the justification to modify how "electors" [0] should cast their vote. This is exactly what was tried in the 2020 election.

Really, it's just an "if enough people in power and in general go along with it, then it works" kind of thing. The current trend in the GOP is to whip and/or expel those who do not fully support Trump. What happens if half of the elected politicians, most of their constituents, and most of the appointed government officials, decide that Trump is staying in office? No one knows. The power of words on paper only goes as far as people let it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Colleg...

[insane_dreamer]

SCOTUS can overrule the States just as they did with CO in 2024

[eddythompson80]

> We have repeatedly seen Trump say something that sounds ridiculous, and his supporters say "that won't actually happen, and if it does I won't support it", and then he does it and his supporters support it.

Any examples?

[Vegenoid]

Attempting to overturn an election, putting tariffs on the entire world, deporting legal US residents without due process, passing a record-breaking number of executive orders, ending birthright citizenship, removing a pillar of the free press from the White House press pool.

[bluefirebrand]

The man is 78 years old

There's a good chance he doesn't even live to the end of this term, forget running for president again at 82...

[paxys]

Trump's father lived to 93, and mother to 88. He doesn't have any serious medical conditions (that we know of). There isn't a high chance that he's going to die of natural causes in the next 4 years.

[bluefirebrand]

> > He doesn't have any serious medical conditions (that we know of).

He hasn't disclosed his medical records, which is something presidents are normally expected to do. You have to wonder why he disclosed his records in 2016 and not in 2024

> There isn't a high chance that he's going to die of natural causes in the next 4 years

Of course there is, he is Seventy Eight and Visibly Obese

His parents living longer is not a strong predictor

[ipaddr]

Natural causes?

[Jensson]

It is likely he will get assassinated, it was already close once, so the poster just didn't include that in his calculations by saying natural causes.

[vitaflo]

The constitution says you’re wrong. And the justices he appointed would uphold the constitution if he tried it.

[newAccount2025]

Sure, on paper, but who will enforce it? He’s already attempted a coup. He has 4 years to prepare for the retry. He’s already putting loyalists into law enforcement and military spots. He’s immune to all lawsuits and has the congress cowed.

[Whoppertime]

If you think January 6th was an attempted coup you must think that BLM was a revolution.

[Zanfa]

And just to be sure he gets the help he needs from the public, preemptively blanket pardon everybody.

[kristiandupont]

>And the justices he appointed would uphold the constitution if he tried it.

I don't feel that's a given. But even if they do, it needs to be enforced which feels much less likely.

[anon373839]

4D chess is an absurd notion when you consider the actors involved. Only malice and incompetence are credible theories.

[sethammons]

When the markets are down, they are on sale for the rich. Eliminating competition via tariffs is good for those who want to compete where they couldn't before. They would let everything burn to further enrich themselves or push their ideology.

[Whoppertime]

Why are they only on sale for the rich? I thought everybody could buy it. When Wall Street Bets was buying GameStop was that an investment "for the rich"? And if not why can only rich people invest when markets are down, and only not rich people can invest in GameStop when they are being short squeezed?

[jredwards]

I think the combination of malice and incompetence remains the most credible theory:

Trump believes that the he/the US has the more powerful position in all of these relationships and wants to impose his will on the rest of the world and make them submit to his/US superiority. Which might actually work if he picked one target at a time. But you can't beat up the whole school at once. The fact that he can't do this to everyone at once, combined with his utter misunderstanding of what trade imbalance actually means, will lead to an outcome that is bad for everyone, but worse for the U.S. than most.

There are two other theories that I think have some shred of credibility, and they're both worse:

1. Trump intends to use his apparent ability to unilaterally impose or negate these taxes at will on a granular level to force countries, companies, and individuals to come groveling to him for favors, allowing him to use the presidency to further enrich and entrench himself.

2. Trump is divesting of dependence on allies because he thinks they might soon be adversaries. That's the most harrowing potential interpretation, but it relies on the notion that he has any kind of foresight. This is really only credible if you genuinely believe that it's Putin pulling his strings. Which is a possibility that's hard to dismiss.

[Paradigma11]

@2) I don't see Putin behind this. The current situation is most likely a death stroke for Russia. Russia's war economy was already on the brink and running on borrowed time. With oil prices cratering that's it.

[epgui]

This is charitable.

[mcv]

They'retrying to play 4D chess, but they don't understand how the pieces move.

[outer_web]

I think less 4d chess and more Erlich Bachman school of negotiation. Bullying people in inferior bargaining positions has somehow worked thus far.

[yojo]

When he started with a limited set of tariffs on Canada/Mexico/China it sort of made sense as a bullying move. The administration at least had the bandwidth to conduct three sets of negotiations.

But it’s essentially impossible to negotiate 180 deals simultaneously. No way does Tunisia get even five minutes to pitch a deal - the simultaneous imposition of tariffs effectively DDOS’d the negotiation team.

[peteforde]

I'd love to hear more about what sort of sense these tariffs made at any stage since they were announced.

[yojo]

I’m not advocating for or defending them, but he bullied some immigration related concessions out of Mexico back in February in the first round of this stuff. You could plausibly call it a negotiation tactic. The latest is just pure madness any way you look at it.

[vkou]

The sense is that it's just another day in the life of a cult of action for action's sake.

[insane_dreamer]

Also for many countries it can’t be remedied because the tariffs are based on trade imbalances (not reciprocal, that is a lie). What does the US make that Cambodia needs/wants? There’s no way for them to close the gap on trade other than to stop selling to the US.

[nwatson]

When the bully gets too ambitious the large number of bullied gang together for revenge, or at least effective countermeasures. The world will route around USA, find they can manage ok without it. The USA will be iced out, lose its reserve currency status, nobody will buy its military technology, making the USA unable to recoup large outlays for ambitious military projects, and the USA will lose its military dominance.

Also, the future of warfare and terrorism is autonomous networks of drones. Mexico and Canada won't be disposed to care what passes through their borders with the USA, and like Zelensky said ... we had the oceans and friendly neighbors, but that won't help us anymore.

EDIT: minor corrections

[bediger4000]

The USA may get the metric system out of this. The only reason the USA can hang on to its ridiculous "imperial" units has been its economically dominant position.

[WrongAssumption]

Imperial units are British, and the United States doesn’t use the imperial system.

[bdelmas]

Totally agreed! But bulling 95% of the class room... That doesn't work. New alliances would emerge, like Canada and the EU. No more new pipelines for the US but more upgrades to Canadian ports to ship oil to the EU. New economic routes will be created, new partner deals, etc... Without the US.

Trump just locked the US, kinda did the finger to the earth, and hopes people will come begging for trade.

[llm_nerd]

>Bullying people in inferior bargaining positions has somehow worked thus far.

Has it? To who?

Canada hasn't, and won't, negotiate a single thing. We increased border patrols for a made up problem and thus far it has entirely served to catch guns and drugs and illegals coming from the United States.

The United States has lost tens to hundreds of billions of sales to Canada. They are never, ever coming back.

Trump sabotaged a critical trading relationship in a way that Americans just cannot comprehend, through his laughably stupid "bullying".

Similarly, supposedly Vietnam has come "hat in hand". Vietnam has literally nothing to offer. It has negligible tariffs or blocks on US trade, it just happens to be a poor country. The bullying is utter stupidity.

Mexico thus far has taken being pissed in the face because they're 100% of Trump's purported problem -- from drugs, to migrants to cartels to funnelling Chinese goods, and the likelihood is that Mexico ends up being the biggest beneficiary.

[Whoppertime]

Wasn't appointing a fentanyl czar and agreeing to spend more on border enforcement a form of concession? https://x.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1886529228193022429 This doesn't seem like Canada isn't negotiating a single thing. What am I not understanding here?

[outer_web]

I mean over the course of his career.

[brookst]

And yet even after stiffing the contractors, the casinos still went bankrupt.

It’s a culture thing.

[labster]

There’s still a way out, the US Congress could convene over the weekend and revoke the President’s ability to impose tariffs. Restore it to Congress as stated in the constitution.

Of course they won’t do that. Sic transit gloria mundi.

[tayo42]

I started wondering if there's a way for citizens to push the issue that these tarrifs are unconstitutional. Like a lawsuit that got escalated to the Supreme Court or some thing if congress isn't going to.

Some of the senators are breaking away though.

If the country survives this though the next thing through executive order could be just as bad or worse. There doesn't seem to be any realistic way out of this insanity.

[otterley]

Such a lawsuit has already been filed: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-tariffs-lawsuit-ieepa-simp...

[throwawaymaths]

are they unconstitutional? i imagine, like many things, congress has constitutionally saw fit to cede its authority to the executive many many moons ago

[Jtsummers]

They could be unconstitutional. The ability of Congress to delegate its authority to the President does have limits. If companies (the ones in a financial position to do this) sued, they'd have standing and could make their case. Whether it's successful or not would take a while to find out, and this is an instance where judges would likely leave the tariffs in place until the suit was settled in a court (before appeals) if the plaintiffs won.

[8note]

they could be unconstitutional, but does that matter? the executive gets to enforce whatever it wants however it wants. nobody has to listen to congress or the courts when the executive is all aligned on what theyre gonna do

[Jtsummers]

No, if it were ruled unconstitutional and the President continued to enforce the policies then Congress would be justified in impeaching and removing the President. This is unlikely to actually happen with the current Congress, however.

Could the President remain in office after an impeachment? Ask again in 2-3 years, but today, no. He'd be removed, no federal employee (civilian or military) would continue to take orders from him except perhaps his Cabinet and the DOGE boys. They all swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the man. In 2-3 years, though, could be a different culture.

[Majromax]

> I started wondering if there's a way for citizens to push the issue that these tarrifs are unconstitutional.

Anyone who imports and is assessed a tariff would have personal standing to sue, arguing that the tax is illegal. I think there are some procedural requirements first to e.g. formally complain, but the dispute would eventually get its day in court.

However, these tariffs are being applied at least under a thin veneer of law regarding declared emergencies. It's clearly beyond the intent of the law for Trump to do this, but it's hard to draw a bright line between this and (e.g.) ambitious environmental regulation.

[fracus]

Leopards eating a lot of American faces.

[steveBK123]

But they were supposed to eat other people’s faces. You know THOSE people.

[paxys]

About a quarter of America (whose vote collectively counts for >50%) will happily suffer if it means that people they don't like suffer slightly more.

[tstrimple]

Reminds me of this: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying...

> Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor was not angry. In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told me. “I would rather die.” When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”

> At the most basic level, Trevor died of the toxic effects of liver damage caused by hepatitis C. Yet Trevor’s deteriorating condition resulted also from the toxic effects of dogma. Dogma that told him that governmental assistance in any form was evil and not to be trusted, even when the assistance came in the form of federal contracts with private health insurance or pharmaceutical companies, or from expanded communal safety nets. Dogma that, as he made abundantly clear, aligned with beliefs about a racial hierarchy that overtly and implicitly aimed to keep white Americans hovering above Mexicans, welfare queens, and nonwhite others. Dogma suggesting to Trevor that minority groups received lavish benefits from the state, even though he himself lived and died on a low-income budget with state assistance. Trevor voiced a literal willingness to die for his place in this hierarchy, rather than participate in a system that might put him on the same plane as immigrants or racial minorities.

[gitremote]

This is likely why Elon Musk--who in 1989 emigrated from Apartheid South Africa at the cusp of Apartheid ending in 1991--is convinced there is widespread fraud in social security benefits. He never culturally integrated with a post-Apartheid South Africa. He comes from a legacy white supremacist culture that sees non-white citizens getting social benefits as ripping off white citizens.

If anyone thinks a claim that Musk is a literal white supremacist is biased, remember that he did two Nazi salutes at the president's inauguration and endorsed Germany's AfD party.

[labster]

Leopards getting purchased instead of Abrams.

[refurb]

This type of comment is boring and doesn’t really advance the discussion.

I used to enjoy HN but it seems to have developed into these sorts of comments quite quickly.

[Chris2048]

Redditification

[colechristensen]

The "4D Chess" is that some powerful internal people doing a lot of manipulation want America to be an isolated very independent fascist state, and some powerful external people want to destabilize America and reduce its foreign influence. They're both making solid progress towards their goals.

The majority of the American people who voted for the current regime are being taken advantage of but like many they'll progressively more and more identify with wanting whatever outcome "their" team achieves.

[keyle]

It's not 4D chess. It's not even 1D chess.

Sparking the local industries needs to happen with incentives, not a tsunami.

You can't swap the supply chain to a local-first instantly. Many things aren't done locally. The factory buildings are gone. The labor isn't there or trained. The basic materials aren't local and need to be imported. The machines needed to produce the parts don't exist locally and need to be imported themselves; sending margins to unrealistic numbers and making it a non-starter environment.

What it is, is another flip of the table, an upset, to cause chaos and feed a positive environment for more chaos, which only suits those who benefit from chaos.

[arwhatever]

The episode of the Search Engine podcast “The puzzle of the all-American bbq scrubber” goes into detail on an example of this, is very interesting and makes the same points you’re making here.

[gerdesj]

Sometimes your best mates go a bit mad. Cut them some slack.

They will need a shoulder to cry on when they re-discover how well a trade war works out. The last ones seem to have happened at roughly 50 year intervals.

The US seems to be incapable of learning from the past. The worrying thing is that Mr Trump is old enough to remember directly or what his parents told him about the last fucked up trade shit storm or trade war.

You do not get to dictate how the world as a whole works ... ever. It has its own ideas about that.

Even Britain at its most imperious could not do that and the US can't even stop itself from trying to impose tariffs on its own air base in .io!

The best we can do from outside is to hope that the US does not collapse completely and that the downward trend stops at some point. If, somehow this all pans out that we will all benefit or even that just the US benefits then fine. Let's pick up the pieces and crack on.

I do not hate Americans nor their rather odd President. We are seeing change happening. It might be for the good eventually but I doubt it but I'm not an expert. In the meantime I suggest we continue to act as friends towards an old friend. When you go barking mad, you might need your mates to stand beside you whilst you dribble and widdle.

[antiquark]

This could lead to the largest "free trade zone" in the world... everyone but the USA.

[trhway]

>Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess or what not but.. sometimes the person doing something crazy is just crazy at the end of the day.

It is crazy and it does have some crazy logic. The US trade deficit is well pronounced only on material goods. If you add services, the deficit is much less, if any. The services are produced by the people and states mostly voting Democratic. So, Trump with his tariffs may succeed in causing the EU and others to retaliate against US services, thus damaging blue states and helping (well in his mind) the red states. Trump already did similar hit against blue states with SALT deduction for example, yet it was just a small preview.

[lunarlull]

> Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess or what not

No one worth listening to.

[lucasyvas]

> Of course I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess

You mean idiots of course.

[ants_everywhere]

> I'm sure some people would claim this is 4D chess

There is some regular 2D chess going on here, but it's not being played by anyone in the US admin. Putin wants to weaken NATO so he can continue expanding. America is a linchpin holding together much of the European alliances and not coincidentally the candidate he helped get elected twice is destroying the US's global standing and weakening the US dollar.

The rebuilding going on in Europe, the increase in European military spending, and the talk about nuclear weapons in Europe is a direct consequence. I don't know if Putin just expected Europe to run around incompetently like the Keystone Cops, but it kind of feels like they're acting quickly and competently without the US.

At any rate, all of this is bringing us much closer to a WWI or WWII style global military conflict.

[Paradigma11]

If that really was Putins intention and doing he makes Trump look like a stable genius. Crude is already down to 62USD/barrel. If this goes on for any amount of time Russia is dead.

[kentbrew]

"Mama always said ... stupid is as stupid does"

[popalchemist]

In the case of Trump, never attribute to ineptitude what can be explained by greed.

He is tanking the US economy so he and his billionaire cohort can buy things (businesses, real estate, stocks, etc) at a low price. Thus amassing more control and capital.

This is how the Russian oligarchy came into power.

[loudmax]

Trump's businesses have repeatedly declared bankruptcy. Don't rule out ineptitude.

[larrywright]

He bankrupted a casino. I’m not sure how you even manage to do that.

[heigh]

He bankrupted casinos 6 times. Six. Managed to lose money on a money printing machine.

[popalchemist]

Yes, he is inept. But in this case, he is following a playbook that was deliberately written to achieve the ends that this series of actions is bringing about.

[mcv]

There is most likely a deeper plan behind it. It's not 4D chess, or if it is, it's played by people who don't really understand it themselves, but there is a goal behind it: ending Reagan's neoliberal economic world order.

That in itself is not a bad goal, and it's one I agree with; neoliberalism has increased inequality, put excessive wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, and looted nations of their infrastructure and social structures. Neoliberalism should die.

The problem is that Trump's economic advisors seem to want a new world order where the rest of the world is even more subservient to the US, and they think they can enforce that by cutting everybody off from the US economy, and they'll only be let back if they accept America's new terms.

The problem is of course that the US actually cut itself off from the rest of the world, and as big and powerful as the US is, it's not more powerful than the rest of the world put together. It's not the rest of the world that will come crawling back; it's the US. After having squandered its 80 year dominant position in the global economy.

[budududuroiu]

Trump is the actual anti-imperialist, and as he said, unifier. He’s so selfless that he’s putting the US on the line to ensure world peace and unity /s

[refurb]

The US represents a huge proportion of global demand.

These countries can establish as many new trade agreements as they want, but they aren’t going to replace the US market.

And to claim that the US has lost allies is ridiculous. Countries have done far worse and remained allies.

Let’s not overplay the impact here. Free trade is a relatively new thing. We’re just going back to the world the way it was a few decades ago.

[itake]

China is isolationist and they seem to be growing.

The problem is the USA is a consumer economy which isn’t sustainable. We could get away with it as a tech leader, but with China stepping ahead (Deepseek) china will be a tech leader and manufacturing leader. What will the USA have?

[ajross]

> China is isolationist

China is what now? China is the biggest trading partner of something like 70% of all nations in the world!

China is asymmetric and unfair, not "isolated". They disallow imports except in a handful of industries they can't replicate yet. That works for China, because: (1) they are huge, and (2) they remain poor, and thus can do the low wage jobs internally in addition to doing them for the rest of the world.

The US only has advantage #1. Though at this point #2 seems within reach...

[itake]

China doesn't allow foreign businesses to operate. See Google, Facebook, etc

[lunarboy]

In what plane of reality is China isolationist

[gscott]

They are the least isolationist they have to sell their goods, often by building the roads that carry them.

[GCUMstlyHarmls]

I think term is protectionist? Not an economist.

[gscott]

We love cheap stuff if the country providing it is weak and not a threat of any kind. Suddenly we don't love good Chinese prices any longer. The massive world wide tariffs are a scheme to restructure the trade order because we have lost control of the WTO, etc to China. We have been so greedy American companies fell over themselves to build factories and joint ventures in China only for China to create competitive companies and force these joint ventures to bankruptcy. Because of the greed, intellectual property and knowledge transfer to China Donald Trump has decided to save the system himself. The stock market being at all time highs doesn't matter if the United States is left empty of capabilities.

[donnachangstein]

Do you think walling their population off from the Internet doesn't qualify?

[drowsspa]

Economically and diplomatically? No, it doesn't.

[itake]

Is any foreign Google or Facebook or any social media website allowed to operate in China?

[itake]

China doesn't allow other tech companies to compete (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc) .

[decimalenough]

China is very far from isolationist. They're making huge investments into other countries with Belt & Road, importing huge amounts of commodities, exporting huge amounts of finished goods. Sure, the domestic market is protected, but it's a long way from North Korean autarky, which seems to be Trump's goal.