No Stupid Questions

You seem to be operating under the misplaced assumption that Trump's goal with the tariffs was to actually bring manufacturing back to the US or improve the US economy in any way. It's understandable if you haven't paid very close attention to Trump over the past 9 years. But whenever thinking about him or his policies, you have to keep one thing top of mind: Trump is a habitual liar who only cares about his own personal wealth and power.

He's not trying to bring manufacturing back to the US or improve the US economy. He's doing market manipulation to increase his wealth and that of those who helped get him into power. He doesn't give a shit about you or me or any of the rest of us. He couldn't care less if the US crumbled into dust tomorrow, so long as he's still on top.

The goal wasn't tho further the economy. The goal was to further racism and hate.

Yes but you, like everyone I seem to talk to these days, is under the false impression that Trump isn't a complete idiot who literally thinks tariffs are the solution to all problems. It's more comforting to think there's some massive conspiracy by Russia or that it's a ploy to make money off the stock market, but I truly believe that Trump actually thinks tariffs will magically fix the economy and his reactions to the backlash are legitimate shock that so many people and the markets don't agree. Yes Russia does stand to gain from this, but they don't need to pull the strings when the guy in charge is innovating economic policy so stupid that a smart person would have trouble even imagining it.

Trump decisions make more sense when you realize he is actually stupid as fuck and there's no hidden chess moves or anyone pulling the strings from the shadows. There is nobody at the wheel who is actually competent even if they're evil. This is all just the whims of a complete moron who is probably also going a bit senile as well.

His goal is to enrich himself and hurt others while getting praised like a toddler that just shit on the toilet for the first time.

Why do you think Donald Trump has any clue about anything he is doing? Has he not repeatedly demonstrated the opposite?

Look. He had the stupid tariff idea. He liked it because he likes the thought of getting his way by punishing people who defy him. That's how he sees tariffs. It wasn't a good idea. People told him that. So, being a stubborn narcissist, he wanted to do it more. Now here we are.

Yeah that would be reasonable policy that doesn't ruin our global trade relations

There's a thousand better ways to handle both tariffs and free trade. We fucked up the latter with NAFTA (and CAFTA), where the EU got it right. Bringing jobs home with tariffs isn't something you just snap your fingers and do, shit takes a long time to re-align, it would've made a lot more sense to have it go through the legislature and say "hey, we're starting out at a 10% tariff on this stuff we want to bring home, and we're going to ratchet it up +2% every year until Congress doesn't pass the law again." Instead, we've got the most volatile president in history implementing tariffs by fiat: ~~10% 20% actually none actually 10% actually 125% for real this time~~. Yeah, in this situation, the best play is to just try and wait dumbass out, because there's a non-zero chance he wakes up tomorrow and declares tariffs woke.

The orange man also could've given all the major CEOs a heads up since it takes years to build a factory.

And giving more tax breaks to companies that stay and sell in the US?

that's technically what tariffs do. topologically, it's the same thing: using policy to give a price advantage to domestic producers.

talk about shopping locally and so forth.

talk gets one only so far. when those numbers start to chomp into the household budget, everyone forsakes the "made in..." label in favour of the price tag.

Yeah, certainly if he were a normal President. But he's a textbook narcissist who only gives a shit about himself and capitulating to the ultra elite. Throw some performance goals set up by his boss Vladimir Putin, and what do you get?

Absolute fucking chaos alongside fleecing the lower 99.99% for anything you can get and manufacturing a crash in the stock market so you and your elite friends can, you guessed it, profit from it tremendously.

A rational president, you bet. This dude is not that.

Trump doesn't want you to buy local. He wants you to shop on Amazon and drive a Chinese-built Tesla.

The goal is not to better the country or the economy. The goal is to make money, for his friends and connections to make money, and leave everything else destroyed while they laugh.

The tariffs not making sense is expected.

He's not trying to act in the interest of the United States.

He works for Putin.

Are you referring to some kind of "opportunity economy"?

You can either convince people with a carrot to do what you want and hope they will comply or make them comply with a sharp expensive stick 🤷‍♂️ Orange man doesn't seem to like carrots

He doesn't do "better".

You are more qualified to run the country than our current sitting dictator

That would be "the carrot". Trump prefers "the stick".

There's a near-infinite number of better things trump could have done.

If you want to boost USA manufacturing industries I'd look at the sector that killed it first.

Bring in international capital controls, forex restrictions, limit consumer / mortgage credit maybe bring in some directed credit requirements. Badically the bank regulation that was chucked out in the 1970s. When us msnufacturing industry mysteriously started to decline. 70s recessions were not only caused by oil price shocks, and the sectoral shift was reinforced by bank liberalisation.

I'd think you'd want to force the USA finance industry to invest (at least some decent amount) in the future of USA productive capacity, instead of letting them invest in China's future and have an arms race to fuel a perpetual domestic property bubble.

Tarrifs might still be part of it - but if your domestic companies can't borrow, they can't grow or maintain/develop asset base.If they don't have working capital facilities, they liquidate fast.

Tax breaks might work/help (as might tarrifs), but if taxes are all on profits, you still need to borrow against the future to make the investment in the present (i.e. make a loss and pay no tax anyway) to build the productive capacity. They'd be better for short payback or labour intensive industries than for capital intensive industry - without other stuff.

I guess if you mean income tax breaks for workers in certin types of jobs/companies, that is interesting. Either way you need quite a lot of monitoring to avoid corruption of just wierd distortions with unintended consequences. That's what banks lending to businesses should do and be good at, monitoring their loans and their debtors.

Tariffs have been the one major actual policy position rattling around in Trump's empty skull since at least 1988. He fucking loves the idea of tariffs, for some reason.

Of course. Republicans hate paying taxes. you can give back taxes to companies by giving them more money. You can even "reverse tariff" by subsidizing products that you want to be cheaper than the same imported products from China.

Tariffs are one of the worst ways to deal with this type of problem.

It's harder to do insider trading if you aren't manipulating markets by posting contradictory statements every morning from your gold-plated toilet.

we don't collect enough taxes as is.

Tariff = more money into Fed govt. -> funnel money from Fed govt into his and his friends pocket.

This is a faster way to get money out of the populace and into his accounts.

Americans shopping local does help Putin. Full stop.

Yes, literally anything communicated or a plan would have been better. A fart in an enclosed room of crowded people would have been a better way to communicate than what this orange idiot did.