Well when you simmer a bunch of vegetables and/or meat and/or bones in water for a long time, the flavours end up in the water, and when Drumpf tariffs a country and the country responds, the stock goes down because it's harder to get ingredients for stock

Mfw 4 of the last 20 years of presidents was this guys Guy lmao

This follows Trump's deeply held belief--perhaps his only deeply held belief--that every single interaction is zero-sum and has a winner and a loser. His base has bought into that wholeheartedly. The idea that multiple parties can win (or lose) in a given interaction is totally anathema to this worldview. If another country is mad about it, the US must be winning.

How many US cars are driving around Japan? None.

also false, it's around 1% iirc but it's not none. and it's partly because American cars are too fucking big for small Japanese urban streets

how many japanese people choose to drive an inferior product? basically nobody. how many will choose to drive an inferior product when it is even more expensive? even less.

Other countries charge us a large tariff

false, most of them are single digits

My new post - This NYT columnist wanted to check how Americans were feeling about the economy so he went to Costco and nobody was panicking! [More inside] - Hexbear

Are we going to have like 50% unemployment in 3 months?

I think we will surely have double digit unemployment this year if Trump doesn't change course and act at least a little bit sane. The US economy is under the control of a deluded, delusional abject moron's ego and vanity. Maybe next Friday stocks will "only" be down ~3% after a vertiginous yo-yo rollercoaster ride. Trump might take that to mean his ideas are already proving to be a success. And the economy keeps taking one bump and bruise after another. In two weeks time the stock market could be down ~15%. Trump's broken brain might lead him to decide the up-down crazy volatility is "built-into" his plan.

What scares me is Trump seems utterly disconnected from reality. He will succeed in forcing countries that are weak and/or poor to beg and plead with him. I'm certain he's going to go on tv and puff out his chest how he got Cambodia to bend the knee. Of course any sane person knows China will never do that. But does Trump know that? If he doesn't - can he learn that it's impossible?

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Ninja edit

I'll repeat something I said a couple months ago. Back then I had no idea how insane things would get so fucking fast. We are in crazytown.

In my mind's eye I keep thinking of Trump's head (and maybe his voice sorta?) morphed onto Dennis Hopper's character in Speed. The dialog has been edited a bit to be topical for today.

TV reporter says "America is held hostage at the whim of a mad man."

And Evil Trump/Hopper laughs....

Yeah we could elect Cory Booker who could rename the gulf of mexico back but keep every other one of trumps policies

Please no I'm watching this shitshow from afar

Funnily enough, Gamestop is up 11% today

Buy the dip

Not as much as you'd think. They shifted their positions largely to cash a while back.

The "crash it and buy the dip" strategy only works if you're confident that asset prices will recover after the crash. There is no guarantee that's the case. Trump is doing damage to the US economy that won't be easily recovered. Even if free and fair elections happen in 2028. Even if a Democrat manages to win. Even if they reverse every one of Trump's economic policies. Even if all of this is true, Trump is doing damage that may not be reversible.

Let's say you're a company overseas that sells a lot of products in the US. You go to great lengths to make your products compatible with American markets and appealing to American consumers. Think of a company in China that makes products for Walmart stores. Walmart works closely with manufacturers. If you want to sell something at Walmart, you need to go through their processes, make products to their specifications, etc. You have to make custom versions of your product just for Walmart stores. Walmart is such a large market that it is worth it for manufacturers to do this, but it is a long and expensive process.

Imagine you're such a Chinese manufacturer, producing products specifically to sell at Walmart. Now you get hit with a massive tariff. Suddenly your Walmart sales drop in half or more. You've spent millions tailoring your products to the needs and preferences of Walmart, and now that investment is just gone. Poof. Millions lost in an instant.

Now imagine that after 2028, all the tariffs go away completely. Are you going to be so eager to go through the process of interfacing with Walmart again? Would you invest those millions again, knowing that in 2032 another Republican arsonist can roll into office and put the tariffs right back up again? I think you would rather spend your finite resources tailoring your products to the consumers of saner countries.

Or consider US arms manufacturers. They're losing a fortune on cancelled arms sales in Europe and other allied countries. The US is now showing itself to be an unreliable ally. As long as the US was a rock-solid member of NATO, countries didn't mind buying F-35s from Lockheed Martin. But if the US's allegiances can swing wildly with each election, that's no longer the case. The F-35 is a modern fighter that runs on American software. Ukraine just found out that a lot of American tech can be remotely disabled at the flip of a switch. Even if a Democrat wins in 2028, and they're the biggest NATO supporter in all of history, would you trust the US? Or would you rather buy something made in Europe that is less risky? If you're Poland looking to buy a jet fighter, one from France probably looks a lot better than one from the US right now. At least France is unlikely to suddenly decide that Putin is great.

Or the ultimate issue - the US's status as the world reserve currency. Trump is currently setting fire to the global trade order put in place after WW2. Remember. This system was built by the US. We dictated the terms of it. We built a system that gave us immense profit and benefit. And Trump is slaughtering the goose that laid the golden egg. The US gains huge economic benefits from being the wold reserve currency, and Trump is in the process of ending that. That isn't something that can just be regained, regardless of who is sitting in the White House in 2029.

This is why I am very skeptical of the narrative that billionaires want Trump to crash the economy so they can buy cheap assets. Buying cheap assets during a crash is only a windfall if the prices of those assets go back up at some point. But Trump is doing a lot of damage to the US economy that simply won't be easy to repair, regardless of what happens in the next election.

Imo it's the former. Take a hit in the short run but ruin everyone else and buy what they have left. They genuinely could be trying to reshore industries but they will be even more monopolized than before so they could offset the losses by dictating the new cost of everything.

My phone chugged scrolling past this