Question: “Are you worried about empty shelves?” Secretary of the Treasury Bessent: “We have some great retailers. I assume they pre-ordered.” Clearly, he has no idea how small businesses operate — and he sounds completely out of touch



https://v.redd.it/0spg5a7h2mxe1

by Miserable-Lizard

26 comments

  1. And when all that fails, it’s gonna be Biden’s fault

  2. We gave every American small business plenty of time to get their next four years of inventory onto the boats. Hours. Overnight even. They’re ready to trade war until their ship comes in.

  3. “I assume they preordered” makes it sound like he thinks someone else is going to be left holding the bag. I take it as he’s never been involved in a purchase of materials, suppliers almost always put time limits on prices often 30 days though in the past four years usually less and lately they’ve been adding – subject to current import fees. We’re almost 100 days into the presidency and the tariff nonsense started over 60 days ago, suppliers are fully protecting themselves now and buyers are the ones holding the bag.

  4. Spoken like someone who has no actual idea about how supply chains and “just in time” manufacturing structures have worked for the past 40 or so years.

    Just when I think they’ve exposed the base of their utter lack of competence…they strip away the facade and show us a new low.

  5. Pre-ordered and put it where? Even if there’s a backstock of things, the big retailers believed they’d need to keep more on hand for this. It’s not going to last extra long. The logistical systems in place are not designed for long-term shortages.

  6. This dumb mfer looks like he has a hand directly up his ass like a ventriloquist doll. 

    He also knows all this damage being caused takes months to manifest, pretending like everything is fine right now as a prediction of the future is anathema to how he operated in the private sphere. Fuck this moron.

  7. These billionaires mistake their luck for genius. They believe they’re self-made visionaries who always understood how the world works—but in reality, they just got lucky (born into wealth, privilege, etc). Now that they’re actually sharing their unfiltered ideas, it’s clear how shallow their thinking is. When you’ve never had to struggle or think critically, of course your ideas fall apart under scrutiny.

  8. How can a person in his position be unaware of how the “just-in-time” business model works?

    Most companies no longer stock beyond a few weeks worth of product at most. Interrupt supply for more than a couple of weeks and you definitely have problems. The JIT model is responsible for the “supply chain disruptions” of Covid. You can’t have an effective tariff war without large stockpiles of necessary products, and the US no longer believes in maintaining any such.

    In a politically volatile world combined with extreme weather events due to climate change, the JIT model needs to be scrapped as as a threat to the security of the country and the economy. It utterly lacks any resilience, as it has too many codependencies that make it too easily vulnerable to disruption.

  9. “I assume they pre-ordered”

    And when the pre-order runs out?

    I think Trump requires that all his cabinet have IQs lower than his. And that is a low bar to get under.

  11. Many many business’ run on **just in time** delivery. No real inventory to speak of.

  12. Okay, it might be time to start talking about eating the rich.

  13. These people are so goddamned stupid and out of touch.

  14. Need to teach him some of that financial literacy he wants everyone to have.

  17. So they are hoping the retailers pre ordered preemptively extra goods because the last few weeks everything has been very stable and all the retailers were not thinking about how much things will cost during the tariff on tariff of stint. Thats a bold assumption there

  18. He doesn’t know what “elasticity” means in that context. If there’s elasticity, it means people will buy less as prices increase. Retailers know that: that’s their job. If there’s elasticity, that’s why the shelves are empty.

  19. He’s fully aware, he just knows the Maga crowd will lap up whatever bull he spews out.

  20. Assuming they pre-ordered implies he knows the tariffs are bad for trade and they should have found a way to work around them.

  21. Ok. They pre-ordered.

    Now the law of supply and demand dictates that their clearing price is equal to the price of imports, because they add value by having it on demand.

    Prices go up to match tariffs either way.

  22. Big retailers use JIT or Just in Time inventory management.

  23. “We have some great retailers, I assume they pre-ordered.”

    You assume? You, the Secretary of the Treasury, with access to all the information you can possibly want, instead choose to make *assumptions* these “great retailers”. The bobble-head “assume” because it’s inconvenient for you to hear the answer–that people are going to starve.

    *this comment conforms to the rules of all platforms and does not in any way call for violence against any persons, real or imagined.

  24. Let’s hope they figure out what they are doing in the next two weeks otherwise we are toast…

    Why start a trade war with the WHOLE WORLD?!!!

  25. Scott Bessent always looks like he’s an alien cosplaying as a human.

  26. It’s like the single biggest qualifications for a position in the Trump admini9iabto know absolutely nothing about the job.

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