[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.”

[cmurf]

We don't actually know if Trump's tariff strategy is Stephen Miran's strategy, nor do we know what Stephen Miran thinks of the strategy.

What we do know is that Trump disproportionately attacks people who criticize him, withholds security protection from them, and sometimes even sends mobs to have them assassinated.

It also took some time before Mark Esper told the public that Trump ordered that protesters be shot.

Therefore, I think it's possible we won't get Stephen Miran's honest assessment in the near future. We'll just have to wait and see.

[walterbell]

Miran is CEA chair, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Economic_Advisers

> The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the president of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical research for the White House and prepares the publicly-available annual Economic Report of the President.