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Originally Posted by jon1959
Just think: if all the previous US presidents had known how easy it would be to wreck the World's economy, it could have happened long ago. This guy Trump is indeed a rare individual.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti.../trump-tariffs
By imposing punitively high tariffs, Donald Trump was playing a high-stakes game of chicken with America’s trading partners – but it was Trump who chickened out and suspended his tariffs just hours after they took effect. The president couldn’t ignore the worldwide economic havoc that he had caused singled-handedly – stock markets were plunging, business executives were panicking and consumers were seething.
Eager to persuade manufacturers to build new plants in the US, Trump said on Monday that many of his tariffs would be permanent. But for Trump, permanent evidently meant two days.
Once again, Trump showed that his second term is one of fiat, flub and flip-flop, of bluster and blunder, of shooting first and aiming later. It’s also a mix of cutting, gutting and cruelty.
And foolery. Trump’s tariffs are worse than, as the Wall Street Journal put it, the “dumbest trade war in history”: they are the dumbest economic policy that any US president has ever adopted. His tariffs quickly caused vast and totally unnecessary damage to stock markets, industries and diplomatic relations across the globe. Before Trump unexpectedly suspended the tariffs, US stock markets had lost more than $10tn in value, and stock markets overseas plummeted, too. Millions of retirees had seen their 401(k)s plunge in value, consumers were facing substantially higher prices and many workers were already losing their jobs as Trump’s tariffs sent shockwaves through the global economy.
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When it came to tariffs, Trump made some basic political fumbles. Not only did he go golfing and speak at a million-dollar-a-head fundraiser as this economic disaster unfolded, but he failed to give a coherent explanation for his screw-everyone-else tariffs. Trump and his team pointed to a potpourri of often-conflicting goals: to erase trade deficits, to collect trillions of dollars for the treasury, to bring back manufacturing jobs, to give Trump negotiating leverage to crack down on fentanyl and immigration and reduce other countries’ tariffs.
Let’s not delude ourselves. There are two main reasons for Trump’s tariffs: first, to satisfy his never-ending thirst for vengeance against those he feels have wronged him (which seems to mean every country in the world except Russia) and second, to fulfill his desire to wield a club over everyone and everything. By using staggeringly high tariffs as a weapon, Trump has been acting like a mob enforcer, telling every business in town: I’m going to clobber you with my baseball bat unless you do what I want.
There’s another reason for Trump’s tariffs: his ignorance about how the world’s economy works. Trump’s “liberation day” speech on tariffs gave the looney, but unmistakable, impression that he believes that Vietnam, for instance, is looting and pillaging the US by selling more sneakers and other goods to the US than the US sells to Vietnam. Trump thinks this even though millions of Americans are delighted to buy well-made sneakers from Vietnam (which would cost consumers far more if they were made in the US).
China holds the better hand in any high stakes trade war because it can play with the US Capital Account. I think that's what they tried earlier in the week that spooked the adults in the room. Putting aside their apparent complete failure to factor in services, Trump and Novarro probably don't even know what the capital account is and why it matters to US financial and economic stability.
If we carry on the way we have been, Trump will have engineered USexit.
I was listening to a shed load of podcasts earlier in the week to try to understand what the (confused and contradictory) thinking was behind Liberation Day and Capitulation Day.
The one snippet that really struck me was the way the US Bond Market reacted. Peter Navarro and Stephen Millar seemed to expect the Bond Market to rise as the stock market took a hit (and the dollar weakened as expected).
Is it called Flight To Security or something - the reason gold also rises when the stock market nosedives?
But it didn't happen.
On Tuesday morning the Greek 'basket case' economy (as reflected by buying government bonds) was seen as a safer and more stable bet than the US one.
Even if the Trump administration was talking from the same script (they aren't) they have massively miscalculated - presumably apart from the bit where they transfer wealth from workers and poor families in the US and the rest of the world (via pensions, savings and jobs) to the mega rich cartel running the US of A.
That sounds suspiciously like an elite Jon.
Yes, thats the impression I got - the Bond Market did not react as expected.
It was shaken, and stirred.
Foreign agents* are massive players in the US Treasury bill (bond) market. I think we will discover China (and a few others) started selling US Treasuries overnight on Tuesday which caused the unexpected and dramatic rise in interest rates and the adults panicked realizing the Trump (Navarro) tariffs were being retaliated against using something they have very little control over.
What makes it even worse for the Trump tariffs is (I think) Congress has just come up with a massive tax cutting budget which will entail massive borrowing. US government borrowing is financed by ... selling Treasury bills that nobody is going to want to buy in a trade war.
These people are idiots.
*I don't mean spies just "participants".
I make no claims to being any kind of financial markets expert, but, as I recall it, if there was one thing which did for Truss and Kwarteng, it was the reaction of Bond Market, so it seems strange that the US Government should be caught on the hop as well.
NESARA GESARA
End the Fed.
I might be biased as Im a long time fan of Bill Maher but this monologue about his dinner with Trump is worth a watch in my opinion.
https://youtu.be/RxlopbcfXpQ?si=95a6d0NFwpI13B1d
If we accept what Maher says at face value and believe that Trump is able to laugh at himself and has a lot of self awareness then the conclusion I believe you have to come to is that the person we get to see every time Trump faces the media is an act. This makes things worse to me because, surely, it means that there is calculation behind the public persona Trump puts on?
One other thing, I thought it was a real cheap shot against Zelensky when he mentioned how he dressed in the White House - if Maher is supposed to be so balanced he should have said Zelensky and Musk.
Trump might well be a psychopathic narcissist who is merely cosplaying a role as US President for dramatic effect. Scratch the surface and you'll find he's just another power and status hungry Joe whose taken it to the extreme.
I definitely think that its an act that he puts on.
Its like his Apprentice persona.
I dont think he was like that before the show.
Nothing wrong with Mahers joke about dress code. He wasnt attacking Zelinskymore the absurdity of the situation.
Yep, he could be a Democrat who's playing a role to trick all the MAGA people into accepting a digital surveillance abyss, so why aren't the TDS people singing his praises if he is one of them?
The loon in the White House holds forth on Ukraine again.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg5q0mev07lo
You mean the possible Democrat globalist plant who could be playing the part of a loon?
Nope he’s a loon.You mean the possible Democrat globalist plant who could be playing the part of a loon?
Loon or not, he could still be one of yours.
https://apnews.com/article/navy-dei-...c055ccf8630221
The books of Maya Angelou have been removed from the U.S. Naval Academy.
But they kept Mein Kampf.
I think this old photograph features Elon Musk on the right practicing his favourite salute!
book burning.jpg
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