Around the tariffs broadly, there is no reason. Americans don't want the tariffs either, Trump is acting like a madman but sadly nobody can stop him currently because the law gives the president power over tariffs. The people who voted for Trump mainly voted because he promised to lower prices. Now he's raising them instead. Our country is as confused as yours.
To be clear: the law DOES NOT give the president power over tariffs. It gives him some ability to massage them, but Congress has this power.
To do this, Trump declared a national emergency so he could use emergency powers that are designed for events like war. Congress is supposed to check this power, but Republicans are bowing to Trump as their all-knowing ruler.
I know what you’re saying here and in some academic sense, sure, you’re right.
Back in the real world though, trump voters are explicitly not the kind of people who read, let alone vote based on policy.
They are literally the group of people that people point to in order to say the idea that an economy is actually based on rational actors is one of the most flawed assumptions in the entire field of economics.
I think most voters probably assumed, as has been the case for the entire life of anyone alive today (including during Trump's first term!), that "Republican" meant "good for business" and small-c don't-rock-the-boat conservatism.
There were pre-tremors of this going back decades, but they always seemed far-fetched: surely the business interests in charge of both parties don't wanna fuck up the bag? It turns out that some of them do.
>I think most voters probably assumed, as has been the case for the entire life of anyone alive today (including during Trump's first term!), that "Republican" meant "good for business" and small-c don't-rock-the-boat conservatism.
Were they just not paying attention during Trump's first term? Did they just assume everyone shouting from the rooftops really did just have Trump Derangement Syndrome? Did Trump's conspiracy laden post-electoral twitter rampage or Jan. 6th really not clue anyone in?
I mean, the economy improved under Biden but I guess the meme about egg prices just kind of short circuited people's brains.
The sky didn't fall in during the first term, so why would it during the second?
I didn't vote for him but slightly less than half the voters did (according to best estimates -- one thing MAGA is right about is that our election security is a joke, with a few private voting machine companies and an army of partisan local officials having unauditable sway over a good chunk of elections). In any case, it's not productive to blame voters. The point of a democracy is to court voters. Shaming them and calling them idiots only pushes them away.
>Shaming them and calling them idiots only pushes them away.
I'm not a representative of any political party, nor am I running for office. I'm just another woke libtard cuck who has to live with the consequences of Trumpist malice. So I'll shame them and call them idiots all I like.
Trump said a million contradictory things on the campaign trail. Even the smartest businessmen who donated money to him didn't think this was coming. After his election, the market didn't expect it at all either.
If you look at polls and read interviews, the #1 reason voters gave for voting for Trump was that he was a businessman who would lower inflation after Biden had raised it. Now he's doing the polar opposite. This is not what Trump supporters voted for.
My coworkers and I have been discussing how to prepare our company for tariffs since last November. I didn't realize that we were smarter than then smartest businessmen. Perhaps that is no great feat.
Trump promised his voters "vengeance"; that is what they voted for.
But yes, you can clearly see from the market that you have been much smarter, if your company was confident enough to take action to spend a lot of money to hedge against this. You'll make out like bandits if the tariffs remain, so congratulations. Truly, anyone who saw this coming and shorted stocks appropriately is now rich. That's how unexpected this was.
But Trump was promising vengeance on cultural issues and immigration. Not on prices. Again -- voters expected him to follow through on his promise to lower prices. Not to raise them massively.
> But Trump was promising vengeance on cultural issues and immigration. Not on prices. Again -- voters expected him to follow through on his promise to lower prices. Not to raise them massively.
This is easy to reason through if you just remember that Trump and his cronies are not smart or competent. They have basically no concept of how to follow through on a promise if there’s any complexity to it.
The kept promises are trivial, while the broken promises include everything that can’t be accomplished by executive diktat. (Such as lower prices, unless he directly puts a price limit on goods in an executive order.)
Basically the only value in reading into his non-trivial promises is in considering “how could he make things worse if he follows through on attempting this?”
> Even the smartest businessmen who donated money to him didn't think this was coming.
At some level being "smart" means having the foresight to predict these things. How smart can you really be if you didn't see this coming? Certainly not amongst the "smartest".
Because it's not like no one predicted it. Yes Trump say contradictory things but it's not at all hard to read the man. People like George Conway have been correctly predicting his moves since 2017, because although Trump is inconsistent in his words, he's actually very consistent in his actions.
> How smart can you really be if you didn't see this coming?
Pretty smart. We judge intelligence as the ability to predict thousands of different things in lots of different scenarios, and nobody ever gets everything right 100%.
The idea that you would define intelligence solely by your prediction on tariffs isn't a definition most people will share.
But when you say things like "Even the smartest businessmen who donated money to him didn't think this was coming", I cannot agree because as I said, plenty of people saw this coming. The smartest businessmen did think it was coming, they were right. They got the signal from the noise. They put the puzzle together.
The ones who didn't think it was coming were not among the smartest. They were fooled by the noise and didn't connect the dots.
> Anyone who voted for him should have known these were coming.
Every time I read a comment like this, it tickles my "someone on the internet is wrong" neuron.
In countries whose political systems have devolved into a 2 party system, this isn't true. The two choices will both be a curates egg - some things they want to vote for, and some they want to vote against.
Someone people will agonise over it, trying to weigh every policy. I suspect that strategy is more common among the HN crowd. It's tilting at windmills. It's a huge multidimensional problem, politicians will change their mind or the fine print, and some outright lie. It isn't solvable in any real sense.
At the other end of the scale people will pick the most important issue and vote on that. The issue is nearly always the same, as it how they measure it: it's the economy stupid, do I feel better off now than I did under the previous guy? Because of inflation triggered by the COVID bazooka the answer for Biden was no, so Trump got elected.
Most countries had a COVID bazooka, all them subsequently suffered from the inflation hangover, those that then had elections did the same thing as the US voters - they threw out the incumbents. It had nothing to do with right or left, as nations flipped both ways.
Personally I used to weigh policy. It took me decades to recognise the futility of it. Now I try to gauge the character of the people I vote for, which seems impossibly nebulous but we humans aren't too bad at reading others. The downside is: it seems a lot of other have done the same thing, which is how we got tribal politics - the other kind of voting hell.
It seems a lot of people, though it sounds idiotic, believe "the way we do it" is obviously the right way and any other is the wrong way. Most have no knowledge of history or appreciation of cultural differences. Every country has the right to run itself as it wishes
I agree. The Chinese seem happy with their government. And it’s done amazing things for the Chinese people. But the point isn’t to hurt China, it’s to reduce US dependence on China.
Americans should proceed with the assumption that the Chinese are a co-equal great power. As we are seeing in areas like AI and electric cars, China isn’t cheap foreign labor. They’re at the leading edge or close in our heels in many technologies. Given that, it’s imperative to reduce American dependence on China. In a world where the average Chinese is as prosperous as the average American—which may happen in our lifetimes—isn’t a good idea for China to have 200x of America’s shipbuilding capacity without America trying to rebuild its own? It’s precisely because China inevitably will become America’s equal economically and technologically that America needs to ensure its own independence and sovereignty.
> the point isn’t to hurt China, it’s to reduce US dependence on China
This was the Thiel pitch. We’re instead driving our allies and trade partners into China’s arms.
> Americans should proceed with the assumption that the Chinese are a co-equal great power
America basically has been. Coëqual great powers compete. (And China is a regional power on the verge of becoming a great power. It doesn’t yet have demonstrated force-projection capabilities, though it’s building them.)
Given how much effort Beijing exerts in suppressing dissent and managing the public conversation about China, how would you or I find out if most Chinese were unhappy with their government?
In fact, there are many college students and employees in China who use VPN to view foreign networks, just like what I am doing now. I can tell you responsibly that we understand the government's suppression of dissent, although many of us are dissatisfied with this, but there is a consensus that we need a harmonious, stable and positive society. Chinese people are not fools, we will also complain to the government, we have many channels, and in fact we have seen that the government is changing. In recent years, the efficiency of the province where I live has been very high, and we are quite satisfied. Many times foreigners will misunderstand the Chinese government as a high-pressure dictatorship, but if you really live in China, you will find that things are not like that.
Your comment made me kind of sad. I remember many years ago, during the Arab Spring, President Obama went to the Uk Parliament and said the following:
"we have learned better than most that the longing for freedom and human dignity is not English or American or Western –- it is universal, and it beats in every heart."
I remember several years earlier President George W Bush, when asked about China, said:
“Young people who grow up with freedom in one area of their lives will ultimately demand freedom in other areas"
So it seems sad to me personally today that I see the comment you have made. I am not too surprised though. It feels such sentiments have been making their way to many countries all over the world nowadays. I feel sad because 10 years ago it really felt like freedom, democracy, etc would continue spreading all over the world...
How do people in China feel when they see stuff like this said by American politicians and commenters? Such as the President Obama and President Bush quotations and speeches I posted and linked?
My friend, I like you, and I like this place too. Most people on HN are very friendly. I understand your sadness. But please don't feel sad for me. I once read a book called On Liberty when I was a freshman in high school. I also read 1984 and The Road to Serfdom (stereotyped, some people may think that such books are banned from sale in China). At that time, I began to realize that our country restricted the freedom of citizens in some aspects. Later, I asked our university teacher, and she said that freedom is always relative, but I still don't quite understand this sentence. But there is one thing I can understand, that there is always a gap between real freedom and ideal freedom. For example, are your people really free? The words can be said very beautifully, but practice is often another matter. If you look at the development process of capitalist countries, have they also sacrificed the freedom of some people? I remember that your people flocked to RedNote a while ago, saying that the lower-class Americans worked several jobs to maintain the high rent. I was actually a little surprised, because in the past, such things would only be associated with our country. Are they free? Maybe I am making a choice between economy and freedom, but freedom is indeed not an independent concept. It is complex and related to many factors. So I simply don’t think about it. It is enough for me to work hard, improve myself, improve my life and create value.
> there is a consensus that we need a harmonious, stable and positive society
It's not clear to me that there's any link between China's authoritarian government and its harmony/stability. Taiwan is richer per-capita than China and just as stable, without an authoritarian government.
In fact, I suspect that China will be rich and harmonious as long as it's not at war (with itself or a foreign power). The authoritarianism is just a historical coincidence.
This account you’re replying to is unironically pro authoritarian just so you know.
Not saying that as trying to start a flame war but their comment history is clearly and openly in line with incredibly partisan and pro authoritarian views and so if you’re looking to understand what they are saying I’m pointing out that it’s not a particularly deep and nuanced view they are trying to make
This is some weird American version of Juche, not reducing dependency on China. Can you explain the dependency reduction mechanism to me?
Just as an analogy: If you were to detonate all nuclear weapons in the US inside the US you would also reduce dependency on China. Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. The path matters.
> But the point isn’t to hurt China, it’s to reduce US dependence on China.
If the point is to reduce dependence on China, why is Trump starting a trade war with everyone? Also, as many people have pointed out, there's little point in applying tariffs without also providing some kind of boost to the relevant industries - this is just hooliganism by Trump.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan began implementing Neo-conservative / Neo-liberal policies in the 80s. This shifted the UK and US economies to high margin things like pharma, finance, technology, and services. Those things stayed in the US. Everything was outsourced to developing countries.
It sounded great. Through free-trade, developing countries would improve their standard of living. Also, democratic countries didn't go to war with each other. So, this led to the conclusion that improved trade between wealthy nations and developing nations would lead to global harmony. Everyone's standards of living would increase, and we'd all be one happy globe.
The US kept trying to push democracy, often through force and by destabilizing governments. But, for some reason countries weren't adopting it. The reason was that academics and political leaders didn't account for the impact of culture. That is, a lot of countries didn't want democracy and free-trade.
A lot of areas of the US eventually got wiped out economically. But, for a long time, they didn't notice. Things stayed relatively stable for a few decades because prices kept falling from all of the incoming cheap goods. Meanwhile, they faced 'brain drain' - the next generation started getting college degrees and moving to the wealthy cities. Some areas became wealthy - the rest became poor.
The US became a powerhouse of tech, services, and finance. But, they didn't have enough skilled labor in the cities. So, the US opened the door to immigration. As GDP increased, salaries went up. People started flocking to the US both for high-end jobs and also low-end jobs to support all of the urban areas. The poor areas of the US became enraged - new immigrants had more money than them, and they had less.
Trump (and I assume the think tanks behind him) believes these tariffs are a last ditch attempt to fix the system. Otherwise, the US dissolves.
What is the missing bit between your last story paragraph (before the summary) and the country dissolving?
I'm not arguing I just need help connecting the dots from "poor rural people don't want to compete with immigrants for the high or low paying jobs" to total country collapse.
It's just what Trump and his circle allude to. They believe globalism is an existential threat and that without a swift and powerful shift, the US will sink.
Oh come on, everybody knew what was going on since the 90s but greed was just too strong. The next quarter's results were just too good to walk away from all of it.
Everyone who needed to know, knew exactly what was happening, but they were getting rich in the process, so they didn’t care.
We elected an idiot. He's raising tariffs on America's greatest allies and ruining our credibility to the rest of the world too. China sells a lot more things to Americans than America does to China (because America is very wealthy), which is called a "trade deficit" (there's some old history here, back during the colonial era when Great Britain and France and Spain wanted gold and silver reserves, they came up with this theory that whichever country has the most gold and silver coming in and the least going out wins), and he thinks that that trade deficit means China is taking advantage of the US.
A lot of people have pointed out that they have a similar "trade deficit" with their grocery store and don't feel even a little taken advantage of.
Even the gold & silver thing is a different argument: that's essentially saying a country should have a net trade surplus with the rest of the world in aggregate. You can have that while still running deficits with some/many individual nations.
The personal-finance analogy would be that it's fine for me to have a "trade deficit" with my grocery store, just as long as I'm not spending more dollars than I have coming in, overall.
This is not an ideological issue, though American politicians will try to spin it that way. It’s that Americans have realized that they have given up core industrial capabilities in a way that threatens American national security. It’s not China’s fault, but it still requires America to slam on the breaks.
If this was about national security, we wouldn't be ruining relationships with allies while strengthening adversaries.
If this was about industrial capacity, we wouldn't be attacking education, chilling investment, attacking energy innovation, attacking science and research, and creating a historically unstable economic environment, all without a whisper of any logical industrial policy.
Stop trying to rationalize the destructive foolishness of this leadership.
There is an element in that the US protects Taiwan. When China was content to make stuff and not invade places things were fine but now it's building up it's military and saying it will take back Taiwan things are more awkward. It's bad for the US in a war situation with China if all their stuff is imported from China.
> When China was content to make stuff and not invade places things were fine
And "content to make stuff"? You mean back when they were underpaid workers doing low-complexity manufacturing and not actually competing with the U.S.?
> but now it's building up it's military and saying it will take back Taiwan things are more awkward.
Maybe it's building up its military because it keeps hearing things like "pivot to Asia" and "we need to prepare for war with China"—for about 8 years now.
If I were China, and knowing how the U.S. has violated international law by invading other countries (like Iraq), I’d be ramping up my military even more.
>Should the world cancel the USA because it is saying something about annexing Canada\Greenland?
Not the world, but If I were Canada\Denmark, I would think twice about if I rely on the US for defense and arms.
That said Taiwan is a red herring.
Im not sure the US policy has a coherent strategy. If there is one, it is that US economic and military hegemony is waning with global economic growth.
Negative sum strategies are valid in war and power competition. If a global recession hurts the rest of the world less than US, that could be a strategic win.
I think they wanted to hear that it’s ok to invade other countries. Despite China being very pragmatic in all matters, China’s view on Taiwan is highly irrational. They want to have it because… well, just because. At the same time they manage to mostly ignore the territories that have been stolen by the Russian Empire. From the practical standpoint they actually have a better chance to regain the Russian territories gradually (through negotiations). I mean, Taiwan can be invaded, but it will be a scorched earth type of invasion making it entirely pointless.
Saying China wants Taiwan “just because” over simplifies the situation.
During the Chinese Communist Revolution the previous government of China retreated to Taiwan. The official name of the Taiwanese government is “Republic of China”, demonstrating that their legitimacy stretches back to this time period.
While Chinese settlers in Taiwan dates back further, China claimed the island in the 17th century. The island was under Japanese rule for about 50 years, before being returned to China in the post WW2 treaties.
The history is deep, and Taiwanese independence is a relatively new thing.
Americans seem to be very sensitive about Taiwan, but if you understand the history of our country, you will find that Taiwan has always been a part of China. Even Taiwanese people today will not deny this. In fact, the Taiwan issue was originally caused by the obstruction of the Americans, which led to our country's failure to unify. Our people have always been resentful about this matter.
And if mainland China would simply end its 75-year rebellion against the legitimate government of China, which resides in Taiwan, there would be no problem.
Well that's one take on it. From the western perspective Taiwan was part of China and when the communists overthrew the government in the mainland with military force it retreated to Taiwan. Now Taiwan is effectively an independent democracy and the commies want to overthrow its government militarily against the wishes of the locals as usual. The world's democratic governments generally oppose the overthrow of democratic governments by dictators who want to grab some place by killing the locals.
A civilized compromise might be a union like the EU with both governments continuing on an equal basis.
>The world's democratic governments generally oppose the overthrow of democratic governments by dictators who want to grab some place by killing the locals.
Not only do Western governments not actually oppose this, they have orchestrated the overthrow of democratic governments and installed dictatorships numerous times when it suited their interests.
The actual Western perspective is not to give a damn who runs Taiwan or how many locals they kill as long as we can do favorable business with them. Although the Red Menace rhetoric does play well at home.
If you go deeper, you will find that China's modern history is full of suffering. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the Kuomintang's post-war activities of taking over enemy property exacerbated the Kuomintang's corruption, which was regarded as "robbery" by public opinion, and the issuance of a large amount of currency led to serious inflation. Against this background, the Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek took the initiative to launch an armed attack on the Communist Party. At that time, the Chinese people were already very disgusted with the war. After fighting the Japanese, they had to attack their own compatriots. Therefore, the Kuomintang was very unpopular, and the people's hearts turned to the Communist Party.
I can see that and my Chinese friends seem happy with how it is in China, but I still don't think a takeover of Taiwan against the wishes of the Taiwanese people would be a good idea.
From European perspective, Russia's latest invasion was a wake-up call that the peace isn't permanent, and diplomacy and economic power may not be sufficient to keep it.
Effectiveness of drones and advanced missiles in the war was also a wake-up call that semiconductors and batteries have a strategic military importance, and the rest of the world is quite dependent on China and Taiwan for these.
I assume that all the talk about trade deficits and unfair competition from Chinese EVs is bullshit, and the US and the EU are having an "oh shit" moment realising they're unprepared for the world where wars are fought with drones and robots.
People have been talking that talk my entire lifetime. Nobody has done shit, because nobody wants to hurt their next quarterly profits. We just had a pandemic that was likely caused by China for which we had to buy PPE from China because we can’t make it.
The best time for rebuilding our industrial capabilities in an orderly way was the 1990s. The second best time is now.
I do not disagree with disentangling the hyper globalised world. We have evidence of how quickly things can go south (bronze age collapse, recent supply chain madness etc).
The entire theory is also based on inequality. We build nothing and we ship all the low paid / environmentally disastrous industries abroad.
What I disagree with is the methodology, which is simply idiotic.
People who share this viewpoint have talked about this for decades and the entire time public policy went in the opposite direction. We’ll never get another chance before it’s too late.
Would you defibrillate a functioning heart because of a perceived future fibrillation risk ?
I do not buy that the only answer to the recent incompetence of the US (and western in general) political system is to shock it with even more incompetence.
Some Americans may wish the US had better relative industrial capabilities, but that isn't what this is about.
This is a direct effect of electing a president who deeply, firmly believes that having a trade deficit means we're getting "ripped off", and who has succeeded in dismantling most of the checks and balances around this sort of thing.
There's no 4d chess here. Trump has been both serious and literal about tariffs his entire career.
Those half measures are never going to work, just like navel gazing about “the root causes of illegal immigration” don’t work. You need big hammers to fix big problems.
It's fun to see people intentionally advocating for the "smash it with a hammer" approach because working with perspective and nuance is apparently ineffective "navel gazing".
I never thought the ~leopards~ hammers would ~eat~ smash MY ~face~ thumb!
“Threatens American national security” is just the administration’s double speak to justify cynical foreign policy decisions. Since 1945 America has struggled with the prospect of its decline. The US would come to exchange a trade deficit for being the world’s reserve currency. However the reserve currency boat has growing leaks. Trump’s administration has circled the wagons, withdrawn support from Ukraine, antagonized allies, raised tariffs. Essentially American international hegemony is collapsing and we are seeing the latest desperate moves made to retain power.