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Discussion Thread: Tariff and Trade Policy News, Reactions, and General Updates
byu/PoliticsModeratorBot inpolitics

31 comments

  1. The idea that this will lead to resurgence in manufacturing is a lie. First any corporations who do decide to bring there manufacturing back it will take years. They also because of US wages and employee protections will automate it as much as possible in these new manufacturing plants. But most companies will just try to outlast Trumps presidency waiting for tariffs to be removed. They will just streamline and offer less options.

  2. Just wait until Monday.

    Tariffs have only been announced, not implemented. Uncertainty is the big driver. Markets still expect Trump to blink at some level.

    The US encouraged companies to find low cost labor in developing countries. Now Trump is punishing both the companies and the countries. Those companies will spend the next several days grovelling at Trump’s feet. Exactly as Trump wants it. The question is how much will he relent.

    Whatever happens, it won’t be good. We can only hope for marginally less bad.

  3. Do you think Trump was just so angry that people kept telling him that Joe Biden left a strong economy for the USA and so he just decided to burn it all

  4. Bernie is doing a marathon speech in the senate right now. He’s been going all day.

  5. The worst part about this is Trump already fucked off for the weekend to go golf, so there’s probably not gonna be a wuss out on this like the other tarrif threats at least until Monday which will be past the April 5th deadline for the baseline to start. Friday is gonna be a bloodbath for the markets.

  6. Suppose this policy worked and the US onshored a bunch of manufacturing. Do we even have the labor pool to run that?

  8. The same people who whined and cried for all of BIden’s term even when the econonmy was makign a clear turn for the better are now on my facebook with “yes we may have to grit our teeth for A YEAR OR TWO but it should get better.”

    A YEAR OR TWO? This is the same people crying last year!?

  9. Senator Chris Murphy has the right of it:

    Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.

    This week you will read many confused economists and political pundits who won’t understand how the tariffs make economic sense. That’s because they don’t. They aren’t designed as economic policy. The tariffs are simply a new, super dangerous political tool.

    You see, our founders created a President with limited and checked powers. They specifically put the power of spending and taxation in the hands of the legislature. Why? Because they watched how kings and despots used spending and taxes to control their subjects. British kings used taxation to reward loyalty and punish dissent. Our own revolution was spurred by the King’s use of heavy taxation of the colonies to punish our push for self governance. The King’s message was simple: stop protesting and I’ll stop taxing.

    Trump knows that he can weaken (and maybe destroy) democracy by using spending and taxation in the same way. He is using access to government funds to bully universities, law firms and state and local governments into loyalty pledges. Healthy democracies rely on an independent legal profession to maintain the rule of law, independent universities to guard objective truth and provide forums for dissent to authority, and independent state/local government to counterbalance a powerful federal government. But the private sector also plays a rule to protect democracy. Independent industry has power.

    The tariffs are Trump’s tool to erode that independence. Now, one by one, every industry or company will need to pledge loyalty to Trump in order to get sanctions relief. What could Trump demand as part of a quiet loyalty pledge? Public shows of support from executives for all his economic policy. Contributions to his political efforts. Promises to police employees’ support for his political opposition.

    The tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship. Why? So that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears. And once Trump has the lawyers, colleges and industry under his thumb, it becomes very hard for the opposition to have any viable space to maneuver.

    Trump didn’t invent this strategy. It’s the playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever. The tariffs aren’t economic policy. They are political weapons. But as long as we see this clearly, we can stop him. Public mobilization is working. Today, a few Republicans joined Democrats to vote against one set of tariffs.

    The people still have the power.

  10. What company would build American factories when the White House can’t even explain their process of setting tariffs? Not to mention that won’t make things more affordable. Companies can’t plan around the chaos that Trump has created and they definitely won’t invest millions in American manufacturing when at any moment Trump could increase or decrease the tariffs. This is why Congress need to get off their asses and take back the purse. Anyone who thinks things will ever be cheaper with tariffs is kidding themselves. If anything this is going to lead to stagflation  

  11. So…I was kind of enjoying this madness watching him fall on his face, but no lie, I’m actually starting to get quite nervous.

  12. So any Republicans going to call Trump out, for the fact that he just left for yet another golf trip? He just caused an economic crash, and is on pace to double tax payer spending on golf trips (from his first term) . How is this not waste , fraud and abuse of the system?

  13. Trump is just a lackey. He was standing up there at the podium with his fancy tariff chart, randomly commenting on countries and reading off the tariff numbers, and it was clear that the bonehead had never seen the chart before.

    The Signal idiots under him are the ones driving the policies. They pretend to bow to Trump’s hueg mind, but they’re the ones formulating the plans. The goal isn’t American prosperity. It’s to obliterate the economy so the rich can by up the carcasses of dead companies for more profit, while giving Putin more wins against the rest of the free world by knocking NATO down several rungs, all while America is taken out to pasture. Part of me feels like we deserve it, like the country needs to have a reality check on its unfair influence and diabolical nation building. But not under the care of Trump. Not like this.

    America will one day, very soon, be an isolated, lonely, oligarchic anarchocapitalist dystopia with unreasonably strict immigration policies. And no one would want to come here, anyway, so those policies will be useless.

    Most people don’t know what the words on the Statue of Liberty say. It’s hard to believe, but at one point, maybe in the early 20th century, people dreamed of being in America. The words seem so alien now.

    >Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

    I guarantee you that if a MAGA was told that blindly, they would call it socialist propaganda. And maybe it f%@$ing is. But if socialist propaganda means us having some actual empathy for our fellow human beings, then call me a card-carrying radical. America doesn’t deserve this statue anymore. America is the bad guy now.

    Something needs to fundamentally change. I fear for the future. America may deserve what is happening, but the people living here (and elsewhere) deserve much better.

  14. Well… I wanna just say that the republicans are to blame and they need to sleep in the shit bed they made

  15. Funny how America is the “worlds greatest economy” and “leading economic superpower” until we are talking about tariffs and now suddenly we have been brutally taken advantage of by every other country and need this to save our “failed economy”.

    I can’t believe how well propaganda works on these rednecks.

    We are so blessed to have been able to outsource our manufacturing so that the majority of us could have these cushy office desk jobs and make 10x the money we would in a factory. That formula led us to have by far the highest standard of living on earth and people really believe we should throw that all away.

    God willing let us weather the storm this fucking toupee-wearing demon is putting us through.

  16. I don’t know about other people, but I’m going to minimise all of my expenditures and when I do have to buy stuff, it will local tariff free stuff. I’m lucky enough to be able to bike to work. Got a nice garden. Got a steam library with about 100 games I haven’t played so I’m good for a few years. Dropped all my subscription stuff and I will really try to live below my means.

    I don’t want to pay tariffs as I’m sure Trump will just steal that money for himself. I don’t want to enrich the oligarchs who run all of our media (Bezos, Murdoch, etc).

  17. i just can’t fathom these blanket tarrifs. it’s just absolutely insane and absurd.

    calculating from trade deficits and putting blanket 10% on even surplus countries is just mind blowingly idiotic. child’s economic plan

    i can’t believe this is the reality. he’s just allowed to do something so insanely irresponsibly moronic and all republicans go along with it?
    all republicans just go along with this insanity? jesus christ

  18. If you thought today’s absolute bloodbath of an opening on Wall Street was bad, just you wait and see what happens next!

    And it’ll all fall squarely on Trump’s stupid ass

  19. “Trust the process, we’ll be rich six months from now”,
    “Trust the process, we’ll be rich a year from now”,
    “Trust the process, we’ll be rich two years from now”,
    “Trust the process, we’ll be rich five years form now”.

  20. We need journalists to hold their feet to the flames on this one. Donald Trump and Co. have said a few different things on why this tariff policy is a good one. Here are a few:

    1) Reciprocal tariffs should be placed because countries have tariffs on us and it’s unfair
    2) Reciprocal tariffs are a lever in negotiating
    3) Short-term pain is worth long-term gain

    I’m open to believing these may be true, but actions speak louder than words. Trump specifically (as in named them, not just the countries they fall under) named places like Jan Mayen, British Indian Ocean Territories, and McDonald Island to be hit by these “reciprocal tariffs”.

    [Only problem, they are uninhabited.](https://www.npr.org/2025/04/03/nx-s1-5350897/trump-tariffs-heard-mcdonald-remote-islands)

    So, why place a tariff on a place that has no tariff on us? Nobody to negotiate with? And no gain to be had?

  23. Market is reacting accordingly. Massive tax hike on every American.

  25. Remember there was a time when Trump said a stock market plunge or crash should mean the president should be fired

  26. Hey does anyone know what they’re claiming to do with all the money from the tariffs? Excuse my super basic understanding, but if tariffs are like a tax I assume the money goes to the government. Is this to pay for the tax cuts to the rich? Will it all go to Trump in some (probably technically illegal) way? Have any media outlets talked about this at all? All I can find is info on how it will affect the economy and global trade relationships and businesses which is useful and all, but if there’s going to be a huge tax hike you’d think there would be some sort of content out there concerning what the money will be spent on?

  27. Prices are going up.

    It’s probably a pretty good idea to go to your favorite big box stores and stock up on consumables. Choose all your normal stuff, from toothpaste to toilet paper before they need to replenish their inventory. Because you know darn well they’re going to jack up the prices and blame it on tariffs.

  28. I’m no math wiz but won’t the wealthy be able to survive this and be able to scoop up stocks and competitor industries very easily during all this and then when a grown up becomes president and things balance out, they’ll have more power and money?

  29. The only person celebrating is Putin as his orange asset destroys the western world,
    So many mistakes have led to the end of democracy,
    We are going to skip a recession and go straight into a world depression and sadly another war.

  30. Has anyone tried unplugging the US for 30 seconds and turning it back on?

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