Which is one of the reasons the countries with high tariffs have had worse economy overall and specifically much worse than the US economy. The higher your tariffs the worse the protected industry and the whole economy.
Yes - with free trade, the US is the wealthiest economy in the history of the world. Economic research says it works. What is the reasoning for throwing it away?
I hear the nonsense reasoning from the Trump crowd, but many know it's nonsense even as they say it. What is their real goal here?
I wish I knew. Nothing I hear from that crowd makes any actual sense except one thing: they have developed such a seething hatred for more than half of their fellow citizenry that they're willing to destroy the entire country, including themselves, just to hurt them.
But that also makes no real sense. So I don't know.
The bloviation on manufacturing is cargo-culting. It's a promise of a better time for an electorate that's being squeezed by ever increasing precarity. It's a rose-coloured version of 1950, when people with a high-school diploma could walk into a giant General Motors factory and get a job that paid enough to raise a family, own a house, and retire at 60 with a pension. Obviously, this was based on the US being a dominant manufacturing power.
(They neglect that what made it the dominant manufacturing power was a war that killed tens of millions and sidelined most other industrial nations, but perhaps that's plan B when this doesn't work)
As for using tarriffs to deliver the factories, they assume the US market is so vast and desirable, that it's worth building plants and full supply chains specifically for it. I'd expect that any firm that believed that had onshored their factories years ago due to plain economics, without a comical tarriff regime to spur it. (I'm thinking of how "foreign" automakers sprinkled plants all over the South making models that largely fit US preferences)
Conversely, I suspect you'll see a lot of firms say "we'll just skip the US entirely" -- the factory you built in Viet Nam or Germany can still sell cheaply to a hundred and fifty countries, and together that adds up to more than even the US can offer.
> they have developed such a seething hatred for more than half of their fellow citizenry that they're willing to destroy the entire country, including themselves, just to hurt them.
That is the people following (speaking very generally). The leaders are leading people in that direction for a reason.
Seems reasonable to me. He'll pick and choose who to give relief to depending on how they bend the knee. It's still going to crash the economy and ruin the country though. In sane times, congress could take the toys away from the executive branch which is obviously abusing its powers. However, we're not in sane times.
Congress would need a vet-proof majority to take the toys away now, which is essentially impossible in modern times. The only way this can be resolved in is if SCOTUS rules that the executive does not have the power to tariff like this, and Trump actually stops rather than just ignoring the court order.
Ruling out money - though domestic companies can cash in from the lack of competition, and it fits the current model of building businesses with large 'moats' so you can enshittify charge rent-extracting prices.
The other usual option is power. I think it's clear that these people will do anything, go to any extreme for power. What is the path from these tarriffs. It's also possible that they made a mistake.
Power. The power to punish. The power to attempt to make people or countries do what you want. It is not economic. It only makes sense if you think like a mobster.
To tank the economy so billionaires can scoop up more/the remaining assets for pennies on the dollar as leveraged/in debt non billionaires have to sell their homes or lose them in foreclosure.
Only a carefully selected subset. Just enough of the most vulnerable of them so they can be on record as being against this, but not enough of them to change any outcomes.
No, Mike Pence is a villain to Trumpist republicans. He speaks for the old guard republicans who still think this is all just a temporary blip and populism will be forgotten in 4-8 years.
First of all you might want to update that assumption, but traditional media aside Zuckerberg is all in on the clown show and he owns the major social media platforms.
This is assuming America is even capable of producing what it needs to generate jobs or investment. There’s no point in taxing coffee from Africa; America doesn’t produce competing coffee! There’s no point in tariffing specialized electronics from China that Apple needs; US literally doesn’t have the capacity to produce these and the investment to do so will be inefficient as American labor is better put to service and knowledge sector work to produce more Apple product designs (just one example).
This is just going to make the American economy more inefficient, less able to compete internationally, and devalue American interests globally, which means America will have less clout to privilege their citizens with.
A developing country cannot possibly lower their trade deficit with USA (which is what these tariffs are based on, not if the tariffs exist in the country’s side). They literally are too poor to buy our stuff, but they can sell their stuff cheaply. This is how I get to have luxury Ethiopian coffee for less than 20$/month. There is no domestic coffee that’s competing with Ethiopian coffee (Hawaiis coffee is doing just swell).
Like, be for real, what kind of domestic banana industry do we have? We don’t, are we seriously going to be “investing” into banana crops in America? Tariffs on bananas is bananas.
> There will be more of a hit as we transition to domestic manufacturing, but it will generate jobs, investment, and keep money in our economy.
That's not how it works. It protects inefficient companies, reduces competition, and lets them pocket more of consumers money. I'm sure they will 'share' it with their labor force.
The US is and has been fully employed without it, so it can't really add jobs. The US has plenty of investment, and it will cut foreign investment - many of those factories are owned by foreign companies. It shifts the workforce to less productive work which will hurt the economy as well.
It will keep money out of our economy too. Economics doesn't work by keeping money in your pocket.
> There will be more of a hit ... but it will generate jobs, investment, and keep money in our economy.
Have you heard of 'trickle-down economics'? That was the theory that if we cut taxes on the wealthy, they will spend/invest more and it will 'trickle down' to everyone else. Guess what happened? Only the first step - the certain one - ever happened. The magical future never did.
It's the same here. It's just a hit for the benefit of a few; that's it. No economist thinks protectionism boosts the economy.
> In addition, other countries could simply loosen their restrictions and tariffs.
The DARVO idea that others are somehow blocking US investment - which dominates the world - has no foundation. Poor countries, of course, don't want their entire economy controlled by some trader on Wall Street.
> There will be more of a hit as we transition to domestic manufacturing, but it will generate jobs, investment, and keep money in our economy.
I would be very surprised if this is the result, but I'm willing to be very surprised.
For now, though, the manufacturing company that I work for, as well as a couple of others I know about, are likely going to close their facilities in the US because of these tariffs. It's simply not economically feasible to pay a tax every time we ship materials from one plant to another in a different country.
If they can't operate efficiently in the US, then they're looking at just ignoring the US market entirely. The rest of the world is a plenty large enough market to address.
>you choose to purchase foreign over domestic, but you have that option.
where can i buy a domestic made iPhone?
>as we transition to domestic manufacturing
manufacturing is capital intensive and has low margins and thus is adversely affected by 2 things the most - unstable environment and high volume based taxes, which both has just significantly increased.
Remember those five other times when Republicans partnered with companies and individuals to build factories here in the US only for it to never occur? Like the Foxconn factories in Wisconsin?
Taking it in the can? The US is the richest nation in the world! If you're #1 it's really hard to say other nations are taking advantage of you.
Americans have been taken advantage of, but it's not been other countries taking advantage of Americans, it's rich Americans taking advantage of poor Americans.
> Decades of USA taking it in the can trade wise appears to be over, for now.
Except that the US hasn't been. Global trade has made the nation wealthier than ever. People who aren't wealthy have been taking it in the can, of course, but that's not because of global trade and these changes aren't going to fix that.
All that's going to happen is that if you aren't already very wealthy, you're going to get poorer.
Convincing the entire world to use its currency and sell it things cheaply is apparently somehow bad for America? I think you're about to get a very expensive lesson in economics.
>> Dems just need to spin these tariffs as the largest tax increase in US history
And then what? From a quick look at the 2024 Democratic Party Platform:
"Democrats will make billionaires pay a minimum income tax rate of 25 percent, raising $500 billion in 10 years. We’ll end the preferential treatment for capital gains for millionaires, so they pay the same rate on investment income as on wages"
Tax increase.
"We’ll put an end to abusive life insurance tax shelters, and stop billionaires from exploiting retirement tax incentives that are supposed to help middle-class families save"
Tax increase.
"We’ll eliminate the 'stepped-up basis' loophole for the wealthiest Americans"
Tax increase.
"Democrats will close the 'carried interest' loophole"
Tax increase.
"we’ll increase our new stock buyback tax to 4 percent"
Tax increase.
"Trump doesn’t care: he slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 percent, down from 35 percent. President Biden will raise that rate back to 28 percent"
Tax increase.
"And for those billion-dollar tax dodgers, the President signed a historic 15 percent corporate minimum tax into law"
Tax increase.
"He also reached a global minimum tax agreement with 140 countries"
Tax increase.
"Biden will double the tax rate that American multinationals pay on foreign earnings to 21 percent"
Tax increase.
"It means ending special tax breaks for corporate jets, and boosting fuel taxes on corporate and private jet travel"
Tax increase.
"We’ll also eliminate the so-called 'like-kind exchange' loophole that allows wealthy real estate investors to avoid paying taxes on real estate profits, as long as they keep investing in real estate"
Tax increase.
"It offers corporate landlords a basic choice for the next two years: either cap rent increases at 5 percent, or lose a valuable federal tax break"
Tax increase.
"We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education"
Tax increase.
"Democrats will make Medicare permanently solvent, by making the wealthy pay their fair share in Medicare taxes"
Tax increase.
"To cover those costs, the law finally restored a vital 'polluter pays' tax that had lapsed 26 years before"
Tax increase.
"fight for a global minimum tax that ensures corporations pay their fair share"
Tax increase.
Spinning the tariffs as a tax increase will do what for the Dems, exactly? Democrats love taxes on corporations, do they not think the consumer bears much of the costs of those taxes?
>> Well, tariffs are about as regressive as you can get
I don't know.
I used to be poor, maybe 60% of my income went to housing.
That wasn't imported.
My food was mostly sugar, wheat, corn, and high fructose corn syrup.
Also not imported.
Maybe the car. I had an older car that I worked on myself, but it was made in Japan.
That would be the main one.
The job I had back then is gone, I was a manual laborer and what I did for work in the early 1990's doesn't exist now, it has been automated away.
I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It was shitty work but I didn't have to talk to anyone. Are tariffs going to bring back shitty work for people like I used to be?
Whatever happened to all those losers of the year?
And it's simplistic analysis like this is why people fall for stuff like this.
Equating a tax on Billionaires to a tax on every import! A tax on corporate jets - it's laughable that people can't see the most basic economic differences in these.
I remember when the GOP was the free trade party, and you had to look mercantilism up in the history books because it was dead. President McKinley, from the 1890s, is one of Trump's economic role models. https://fortune.com/2025/03/10/trump-william-mckinley-tariff...
I wonder how pre-MAGA GOP'ers are reconciling this new reality with their existing beliefs.
I remember when we had skilled helmsman that steered the US away from recession despite all the indicators like inverted yield curve screaming recession.
Hopefully all this will kill forever the idea that the GOP is the party of business. They’re the party of the rich, like the Democrats. When people say both parties are the same, this is what they’re talking about. Not the religion or social justice masks the parties try to hide behind.
It's pretty hard as an indicator to miss this, considering that it's one of the very rare times a government loudly and proudly declares it's going to intentionally cause a recession.
A lot of supporters of the trade restrictions don't care. They're working people who don't own a lot of stocks and all they've seen is their jobs sent overseas.
To them, it doesn't even matter if things get "worse" for a while. Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
> Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
Then they’ve failed to imagine how much more difficult their life will become under excessive tariffs.
It’s also eye-opening to watch so many people in my extended family and social network cheer on DOGE and tariffs right until they impact their own jobs. Lot of people out there didn’t connect the dots about how their own jobs were going to be impacted by tariffs.
> Then they’ve failed to imagine how much more difficult their life will become under excessive tariffs.
Again, these workers don't have jobs. When the John Deere factory closes down in your town and moves to Mexico, tariffs sound good even if it's just to punish such companies and the abuse of their workers.
If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life. Factories may even return, and your life may improve. It's better than just accepting your situation.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
Prices going up on everything will absolutely make a difference in their lives. Even with government assistance and very low income, they still have to buy things to live - and they'll be able to afford even less. The poorer you are, the harder this is going to hit you.
They are absolutely buying goods that are manufactured in countries subject to these tariffs. They have to buy clothes and all sorts of everyday items, and since they can't afford to buy things manufactured in the US (when that's even an option), it's very likely they buy things that are made in China/etc at a higher rate that wealthier people. Even going back to your examples, flour will be going up in price, as well as gas and car parts.
Your comment insinuates that people complaining about tariffs are disconnected from those living in poverty, but thinking that those living in poverty won't be affected by prices going up around the board is a much bigger disconnect.
Oil may go down. Flour? The combine to reap the wheat will go up, why would flour go down?
Poor people in the hood still wear clothes. Clothes will go up.
That car on the verge of breaking down? Car parts will go up.
Poor people still have a supply-chain footprint that has many branches outside the country. At least some of the things they need are going to get more expensive.
Do I have it right? The honest hard working American doesn't exist and won't feel it. Either we're criminally rich or just criminals? What a weird argument.
Yeah and when it does break down, the parts are going to cost more to fix it.
And what are they gonna do when their car breaks down catastrophically? Buy a used car? The prices of those will skyrocket once the price of new cars goes up.
Then really desperate people will steal cars as the value of them, and used parts start to skyrocket.
It doesn't even take half a brain cell to see how this works.
> They are not buying the latest igadget, or really anything chinese/gloablist for that matter, except for whatever junk at dollar tree. They buy flour, they buy gas and they pray their car doesn't break down.
You don’t understand how interconnected the economy is.
You don’t really think that flour appears on the shelves at the store without any coupling to internationally-sourced goods, do you? The parts for the farm equipment, the steel for the buildings it’s stored in, the vehicles that deliver it to the store.
This idea of the economy as an ultra-simplistic 1:1 line between raw product and the supermarket shelves is not how the world works.
Ignoring that, you conveniently glossed over the part about their car breaking down. What happens now when their car does need new parts? Tires wear out?
It’s also absurd to claim that poor people don’t enjoy things like access to cheap cellular phones.
Sure, I'll take you up on that offer. I grew up in a poor fishing family struggling to survive living in a trailer park so I'm very well aware of what it's like growing up in deep poverty.
Frankly I know more poor people than you pretend to know and the reality is that they are going to suffer far more under these tariffs than anyone else. All that stuff they buy at dollar tree because they have no other options are imported from all over the world because that's the cheapest stuff available.
You won't convince him, because he is not open to be convinced.
I think things will get ugly for the poorest people in society, but I am curious at how things will get ugly exactly.
I don't think price increases due to tariffs will be the worst if it. I think the perfect storm of higher prices, lower economic activity due to the halt in global trade, poor stock market perform performance, and ultimately economic contraction will result in mass layoffs, companies going out of business, and high unemployment rate.
Suddenly people won't even be able to find that odd job anymore.
Tariffs will have an larger impact on low income people because they act as a flat tax on goods. There is a certain fixed dollar value that everyone needs to survive the month, and that value just got larger while income remained the same. When you're poor the smallest increase in cost of living pushes you in to the red.
This is why inflation was such a huge issue. I fail to see how this is any different.
They’ll make things harder to afford but I get your point. They had one way to make money which was their factory and now it’s gone and orange man is promising he’ll bring it back. It’s a no brainer, of course you go all in on that one hope that you have.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
That government assistance is also being threatened (often by adding work requirements to it), and those odd jobs can also go away or become much more scarce if the economy goes over the edge.
Finally, the cost of everything will go up, which will hit those that are scraping by with odd jobs and government assistance the hardest.
I hope it doesn’t happen, but when you assert things are as bad as they can get, that just doesn’t match the situation you described. They can get worse.
It does matter if things get worse and it's very uncaring to say otherwise. The import taxes are going to make wealth inequality much worse and significantly hurt not just almost all American's but large swathes of the world too.
labour participation rate is the number you want to be looking at - unemployment excludes people who have given up looking
anectdotally, you dont see people dropping out of universities en masse because businesses are desperate for workers and willing to make it worth students while to put off or skip the education.
you see that in and out in tech/software dev, but not across industries
Plenty of his supporters are SMB owners or people that work in trades/factories. This is not a revolution of the indigent. What these people don't realize is even if they make 200K a year and drive an 85K financed F-250, they are effectively in the same class as someone making 50K a year managing a Dollar General. These people have no class awareness and they voted in a representative of the ultra wealthy intent on pillaging our economy. Some may believe that Trump will usher in some era of economic prosperity but they are wrong.
On the other hand Trump will deliver on another, implicit promise to them, which is inflict pain and suffering on a great deal of people they dislike for whatever reason.
> What these people don't realize is even if they make 200K a year and drive an 85K financed F-250, they are effectively in the same class as someone making 50K a year managing a Dollar General.
More people making under 50K per year voted for Trump in 2024 than voted for Harris.
I didn't say people making under 50k weren't voting for Trump. I was saying it's not exclusively some revolution of the poor (statistically it can't be). My larger point is it doesn't matter whether his voters make 50k or 200k, they are the lowest class in American society and voting for Trump and his attendant policies is against their own economic interests.
And despite economic prosperity being the cornerstone of his 2024 campaign, somehow it isn't anymore. Now his supporters have pivoted to this idea that we must all live in a kind of austerity so that collectively (waves hands around) we enter a new age of American prosperity. Literally this sea change in MAGA sentiment has happened in the last six weeks. It's baffling.
> On the other hand Trump will deliver on another, implicit promise to them, which is inflict pain and suffering on a great deal of people they dislike for whatever reason.
Not so implicit, "I will be your retribution".
And this part is very much a normal Republican position. The realisation that Americans will vote for a policy which hurts them so long as it's positioned as hurting the people they hate was key to Republican success.
"Nobody gets kicked in the head" loses in American politics if it's up against "Everybody gets kicked in the head, yes those awful people you don't like will get kicked in the head"
And when your implementation "accidentally" forgets to kick the wealthy in the head? Well the important thing is you kicked people in the head - you're not one of those scum who don't want to kick the awful people in the head.
I don't particularly like the idea of tariffs, but it is what it is.
Having to put up with policies you don't like is simply the social consequence of applying unpopular policies for four years in the other direction.
If the opposing party supports outsourcing, importing of labor, no protections for domestic industry, then they should expect retaliation from people who don't like those policies and who have the means to vote in someone who will push for whatever they view as corrective action.
This is a democracy. If one party pushes unpopular policies (unpopular to the other side), don't be surprised with the opposition pushes back.
> Los Angeles Times’s Vincent Bevins, who wrote that “both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years.” Bevins went on: “Since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.”
The problem is that the actual solution is taxes and redistribution but if you try that, they’ll lynch you (the very people who would benefit most from it). Better to have weird Trumponomics than that.
I don't think it's that simple. First, the US economy was supercharged by virtue of being the only economy left humming along after WW2.
Also, in the mid 20th century, the top income tax rate was 91%. Now it's 37%. Capital gains taxes were also much higher. The wealthy were taxed much more heavily during our economic boom times than now. It's not hard to think that having a more equitable distribution of wealth, not taxes, might have something to do with it.
They don’t have to own stocks. If they like eating and buying household goods then this will affect them negatively. It will help very few people for a long time, even if it goes perfectly to plan.
I’d be extremely surprised if other countries meekly do what Trump wants. There are many options on the table, and change is more likely in a crisis.
> To them, it doesn't even matter if things get "worse" for a while. Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
Really? How do you even know that? You think another round of price hikes within the year is unimaginable, which what the economic consensus on immediate tariffs this high predicts?
The unemployment rate is 4%. The amount of liberation day tariff supporters is an order of magnitude higher than that. Pretending that things can't get worse is dangerous and stupid.
If people don't want things to continue to deteriorate, then the economic disenfranchisement of the American working class must be put to a stop. It's really pretty simple.
> A lot of supporters of the trade restrictions don't care. They're working people who don't own a lot of stocks and all they've seen is their jobs sent overseas
A lot of us were also in the market before the pandemic (aka before 4 years ago), so we remain in the green.
Personally, it's a win-win.
1. Based on past tariff action, the current tariffs will not be repealed by any future administration - there is plenty of harsh feelings amongst some of us Dems who were IRA adjacent to France and Germany's lobbying against the Green New Deal and calling it "protectionism".
2. This plus DOGE has caused short term pain as reflected in the NY by-elections leading to Stefanik's nomination to the UN being pulled.
3. Those of us with some sympathy for economic nationalism but don't caucus GOP have been vindicated, but have a messaging tool now as well.
4. We can finally take the UAW and ILA national leadership behind a shed and pull a metaphorical old yeller. There's no point trying to make peace with National when much of their local leadership leans GOP. Makes it easier to concentrate on AZ, NV, and GA - states where the demographic and union makeup is completely orthogonal to the UAW and ILA's cadre. Makes it easier to help the AFL-CIO as well.
5. Sullivan and Raimondo's doctrine has been vindicated. Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, and India have now been made much more cost competitive than China or transshipment via Vietnam or Thailand - either you reduce transshipment from China or your competitors in apparel, textiles, and electronics are subsidized. Vietnam already has sent their Dy PM to negotiate as we speak to reduce tariffs.
Europe also has no option but to diversify away from China as well. Either you fund a state selling intermediate parts to Russia in Ukraine, or start building domestic defense and industrial capabilities like that which existed before the 2000s (which they are now doing).
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Already, some of my peers from my previous life have started testing the waters for a Dem equivalent of the Tea Party. Lot of realignment coming in the next 2 election cycles.
curious what the Dem equivalent of the tea party means? Does that mean a libertarian streak before populist takeover, or is that meant more in terms of a critical voting block to extract concessions?
As in a more populist or outsider type tinge (or vocalizing those positions).
I'd disagree with a number of their foreign policy choices, but the house doesn't really set foreign policy, and the hawkish policies I'd want will anyhow be pushed by this admin but not revoked by any incoming admin.
There's a pretty solid crop of state assembly members and outsiders who can competitively primary out a number of older generation Dems, assuming a model similar to Illinois and NY 2020 is followed.
The local food bank I donate to sends out a quarterly newsletter and the number of families it serves has more than quadrupled since 2020.
I think this is the primary reason the Democrats have been losing, clearly voters are feeling economic hardship in a big way, and ignoring it or belittling the point is what lost voters.
We can't focus on social issues when the hierarchy of needs isn't being met.
Historically a lot of Republicans have derided poverty statistics and poverty programs because the people on the programs “all have big screen TVs”[0]. I’m not sure the politics are as clear cut as you indicate.
I mean, I watched and participated in the US Election last year, it was extremely clear to me that Republicans focused on economy, and Democrats focused on social issues.
The Republicans won, which is an indictment on the Democrats messaging in my opinion.
I'm not even talking about the merits of which party has better ideas, or if people are voting against their own best interests. But I think the party that said they'd do "something" to make the economy better is the one that won.
Why Democrats don't hammer on retraining and education so that more people can participate in the services and information economy confuses me greatly. Manufacturing isn't coming back, at least not immediately.
> that Republicans focused on economy, and Democrats focused on social issues.
That impression is partially an artifact of the information space disparity. Republicans spent a ton of time talking about social issues and the Democrats talked about lot about economic issues, but coverage of those things was wildly uneven. If you had any exposure to the Hispanic communities affected by deportations now, ask how many of the people making “I didn’t know he’d deport hard-working people like …” comments spent 2024 hearing a ton about how trans were threatening women or drag queens were grooming kids to be gay on WhatsApp/Telegram, and not coverage of the many, many times widespread deportation was promised. It’s almost a cliche to find people who thought they were voting for lower prices and are just now realizing that tariffs are taxes they pay, and that’s a function of where they get their news.
Yeah I definitely didn't say I agree with the methods proposed, only that it's clear that it struck a chord with the population.
Dems really need to focus on messaging that can resonate with those people. Things like vouchers for trade school to boost higher end blue collar jobs, etc.
You're both painting polarized views. I'm from the rust belt where many of these disenfranchised can be found. Manufacturing isn't coming back. Tariffs are only going to increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
I think the point was that these tariffs are hurting stocks because it is hurting workers, which hurts consumer spending. These tariffs are against workers primarily. The next time you see someone digging up a water main check their boots, the supervisor might be wearing Carhartt and Redwing, if they are a hipster, but the people who are muddy are typically wearing much cheaper imported equipment.
Its a perspective thing. I saw an interview a couple weeks ago of a man in his 30s saying he finished high school and couldn't find a warehouse job like his father did and had been working odd jobs ever since.
To my parents that was an unacceptable thing, had I finished high school and not done college (or some vocational school) I'm sure they would have kicked me out of their place. So not continuing my education was never an option, I had to, because from their perspective that was the only way.
This other dude never had this, his dad worked an warehouse job at some big box store more likely, went up the chain there and made a decent living for his family. The expectation for the family was that if their kids had done the same, it would have been fine, he said his father never even finished high school, but that isn't reality anymore for most people and I don't think this has been a culturally set reality in the US.
People were very much still expecting this would continue to be a thing but its very hard for you to do that in a place where there is very little manufacture and with so much tech taking over brick and mortar stores.
The thing with tech taking over the world, is it's taking over the world everywhere and the last few places where labor is still cheap are employing humans.
In so much stuff involving process automation if you go about building a new factory you're going to minimize your labor costs as much as possible. The only dumb jobs that remain pay very low and/or are back breaking, and everything else is a high tech job. On top of that process efficiency means that a single factory somewhere could easily produce all the product needed to meet world demand, the most difficult part would be meeting regulations in other countries. We are past the days where you need 20+ factories building the same thing in the US for most products. You build it in one place and put it on a truck with fast and cheap shipping.
People will keep crying for a past that no longer exists while the world changes ever faster.
The US has a ton of manufacturing, but few manufacturing jobs, because they automated a lot of the aspects of production. This was one the biggest concerns by Andrew Yang when running for president, lack of good jobs because of automation takeover.
I don't think the parent is seriously describing these people as actually facing every economic headwind, but is instead pointing out the lack of imagination on the part of the people supporting this policy.
"Things are terrible, so we have to do something!" No, you have to do something that will help. Just "doing something" isn't good enough. And if you think "things can't get any worse", yeah, they can. A lot worse.
Don't make random changes just because things are bad. You need changes that will help, which is a lot harder.
> Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable
Horseshit. The most fervent Trump supporters are upper-middle class professionals who are bored with their lives. Hence the frequent boat parades for Trump. It's why the huge, expensive trucks are the ones flying the Trump flags. And practically all of them have 401ks, which means they are at least indirectly invested in stocks.
That may be your lived experience, but it doesn't match the data.[1]
The working class is shifting to Trump because his rhetoric matches what they want to see: trade restrictions, protections on domestic labor, and the return of good/stable manufacturing jobs.
Trump is almost certainly not the best representation of the American worker, but he's winning because he, at least, tells them what they want to hear.
"minimum 10% tariff on all imported goods and materials" certainly sounds like a way to increase costs.
Increasing costs seems generally worse for an economy than decreasing costs.
I feel like most people could follow this logical chain of reasoning to a conclusion of "thus you have a elevated risk for an economic recession compared to the state of affairs before the tariffs."
“WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” Trump said in a social media post. “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”
“If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit - there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…Market will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy.”
There's a theory going around that the administration wants to crash the market so they can buy everything up for cheap, in a similar way to what happened in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
At the same time though it seems like the current president has always been pro tariffs even though they are almost always bad for a economy, the reason why the admin is applying a lot more of them is because almost everyone left in the admin's circle is a yes men.
It's both an interesting and tragic phenomenon that seems much broader:
Plausibly, fashion is primarily about sex, especially at the ages when humans are most sexually active. And possibly changes in fashion are really second-order effects of changes in sex:
The most shocking thing, researched and reported but I don't think people grasp the significance, is that young adults are having much less sex.
Sex is among the most fundamental human drives. People can't stop themselves, which is why IMHO it gets such attempts to restrict it, by law and custom and shame, across time and place (to varying degrees). You can be sitting there, clearly knowing you shouldn't do it, and it can be very difficult to stop. All those efforts to stop people, by cultures, religions, governments, parents, etc. have widely failed - people still have pre-marital sex, commit adultry, get drunk and screw, hire prostitutes, watch porn, etc. (I'm not judging.)
Incredibly, now something has actually managed to significantly reduce sexual activity - and among people who are perfectly free to do it. Has that happened before in history (serious question)? Where/when/who is it now happening for and not happening? Speculating on why is perilous without evidence - imho it's just disinformation. But whatever the cause(s), it's a signal of something very serious.
Wearing plainer clothes is possibly just a follow-on effect.
Anecdotally it’s the triple whammy of depression/anxiety, social isolation, and scarcity/precarity.
The precariousness I think is more of a factor as the long term poor have still managed to survive historically. The randomness and changing social safety nets and possibility of needing to migrate to survive is probably a big factor.
It feels like we’re all bracing for the end of the world all the time.
Procreation (or lack of it) is voting “no candidate”. It’s the only control anyone has over their life today.
And honestly, you should have been downvoted for calling them "low-information" voters. Not only is it condescending, you simply discounted them for being part of the "other" party. Perhaps they are very informed - maybe much more than you regarding the deficit, the economy, their frustrations, etc.
It is great to have a spirited debate, but to call people derogatory names simply because they don't share your viewpoint is the wrong path to take.
Anyone who isn't afraid of woke can see certain voters were demonstrably taken in by transparent demagoguery. There are consequences to actions and beliefs, criticism can happen, people are sometimes wrong and we can acknowledge that without pearl-clutching. "Low information" is specific and actionable, unlike "stupid". Sometimes one decision was better than the other and we can only progress by understanding that, despite any hurt feelings. Sorry, no participation trophies today!
> Anyone who isn't afraid of woke can see certain voters were demonstrably taken in by transparent demagoguery.
How is this different than the decision-making process of many Democrat voters? Trying to make any rational arguments on "certain issues" gets you labelled as a fascist, racist, bigot or all of this (and more) at the same time. There's nothing rational about this kind of approach.
It seems to me that the left has become lazy and often assumes that something must be rational because they believe it.
There is no popular left in the US, we have a center-right neoliberal party who rat-fuck all competition to the point their base has given up.
The corporate owners of social and news media pick the issues they want people to talk about and it is never anything I think is particularly compelling. Why do we care about a tiny fraction of a fraction of the US population's preferred pronouns again? Because nobody has to spend any money to fix that, unlike actually important things like environmental collapse.
I think it is foolish to think that just because it was easy to tear something down, it will be easy to build it back up.
People are pissed off about the tanking economy and the brain-dead tariff approach, even though Trump said he was going to do this.
We know what tariffs do, it has been proven over and over again. What conclusion am I supposed to come to, after witnessing the predictable clown-show since January? We lost 5% today.
Dems just need to spin these tariffs as the largest tax increase in US history (which is basically correct).
I’m curious to see how they are going to fumble this.
I wanted to argue...
then I couldn't
It's also a tax on everyone, to the benefit of large corporations which can now increase prices / decrease value), due to less competition.
Which is one of the reasons the countries with high tariffs have had worse economy overall and specifically much worse than the US economy. The higher your tariffs the worse the protected industry and the whole economy.
Yes - with free trade, the US is the wealthiest economy in the history of the world. Economic research says it works. What is the reasoning for throwing it away?
I hear the nonsense reasoning from the Trump crowd, but many know it's nonsense even as they say it. What is their real goal here?
I wish I knew. Nothing I hear from that crowd makes any actual sense except one thing: they have developed such a seething hatred for more than half of their fellow citizenry that they're willing to destroy the entire country, including themselves, just to hurt them.
But that also makes no real sense. So I don't know.
The bloviation on manufacturing is cargo-culting. It's a promise of a better time for an electorate that's being squeezed by ever increasing precarity. It's a rose-coloured version of 1950, when people with a high-school diploma could walk into a giant General Motors factory and get a job that paid enough to raise a family, own a house, and retire at 60 with a pension. Obviously, this was based on the US being a dominant manufacturing power.
(They neglect that what made it the dominant manufacturing power was a war that killed tens of millions and sidelined most other industrial nations, but perhaps that's plan B when this doesn't work)
As for using tarriffs to deliver the factories, they assume the US market is so vast and desirable, that it's worth building plants and full supply chains specifically for it. I'd expect that any firm that believed that had onshored their factories years ago due to plain economics, without a comical tarriff regime to spur it. (I'm thinking of how "foreign" automakers sprinkled plants all over the South making models that largely fit US preferences)
Conversely, I suspect you'll see a lot of firms say "we'll just skip the US entirely" -- the factory you built in Viet Nam or Germany can still sell cheaply to a hundred and fifty countries, and together that adds up to more than even the US can offer.
> they have developed such a seething hatred for more than half of their fellow citizenry that they're willing to destroy the entire country, including themselves, just to hurt them.
That is the people following (speaking very generally). The leaders are leading people in that direction for a reason.
Yeah, I agree. But what is that reason?
I'm not sure I buy it, but this is one theory:
https://bsky.app/profile/chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3llu...
Seems reasonable to me. He'll pick and choose who to give relief to depending on how they bend the knee. It's still going to crash the economy and ruin the country though. In sane times, congress could take the toys away from the executive branch which is obviously abusing its powers. However, we're not in sane times.
Congress would need a vet-proof majority to take the toys away now, which is essentially impossible in modern times. The only way this can be resolved in is if SCOTUS rules that the executive does not have the power to tariff like this, and Trump actually stops rather than just ignoring the court order.
Ruling out money - though domestic companies can cash in from the lack of competition, and it fits the current model of building businesses with large 'moats' so you can enshittify charge rent-extracting prices.
The other usual option is power. I think it's clear that these people will do anything, go to any extreme for power. What is the path from these tarriffs. It's also possible that they made a mistake.
In a different thread I speculated that their plan is to blame their enemies and objects of hatred for the results: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43575061
But it seems like they need a positive result from this?
Power. The power to punish. The power to attempt to make people or countries do what you want. It is not economic. It only makes sense if you think like a mobster.
To tank the economy so billionaires can scoop up more/the remaining assets for pennies on the dollar as leveraged/in debt non billionaires have to sell their homes or lose them in foreclosure.
The problem is they don't think it's nonsense. They really believe this will pay down the deficit, bring jobs back to the US, make it great again.
They see it as closing loopholes - "rebadging made in China as made in Vietnam, Thailand, Japan? Nice try, Trump's smarter than that!"
Even Mike Pence came out and said that.
Is this a sign republicans in congress may do something?
Only a carefully selected subset. Just enough of the most vulnerable of them so they can be on record as being against this, but not enough of them to change any outcomes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we get enough Republicans in congress to pass a law taking the tariff power away from Trump, but Trump will veto that law.
I would be quite surprised if we can get enough Republicans to override that veto
No, Mike Pence is a villain to Trumpist republicans. He speaks for the old guard republicans who still think this is all just a temporary blip and populism will be forgotten in 4-8 years.
Coming right on the heels of the largest layoff in US history (which is still ongoing, depending on your definition).
How would they get the message out even if they had one? Republicans own the media.
Which media? Most "traditional" media is quite left leaning.
First of all you might want to update that assumption, but traditional media aside Zuckerberg is all in on the clown show and he owns the major social media platforms.
If you mean they're not yet state controlled mouthpieces of a conservative dictator, sure, I guess that counts as left leaning?
I see a lot of shock and gossip.
And a LOT of reporting about how the dictator is pissing off his rich enablers.
I guess if you consider the left and the right to both be bootlickers of the oligarchs we're both right.
I don't see a lot of content that supports your thesis I guess.
They won’t even need to spin it. People are going to feel it very quickly.
and done purely on Presidential authority without Congress.
Matt Levine on his column today went over this.
No taxation without representation!
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This is assuming America is even capable of producing what it needs to generate jobs or investment. There’s no point in taxing coffee from Africa; America doesn’t produce competing coffee! There’s no point in tariffing specialized electronics from China that Apple needs; US literally doesn’t have the capacity to produce these and the investment to do so will be inefficient as American labor is better put to service and knowledge sector work to produce more Apple product designs (just one example).
This is just going to make the American economy more inefficient, less able to compete internationally, and devalue American interests globally, which means America will have less clout to privilege their citizens with.
There's no point in Africa taxing imports from us under that logic?
They lower it, we lower it.
A developing country cannot possibly lower their trade deficit with USA (which is what these tariffs are based on, not if the tariffs exist in the country’s side). They literally are too poor to buy our stuff, but they can sell their stuff cheaply. This is how I get to have luxury Ethiopian coffee for less than 20$/month. There is no domestic coffee that’s competing with Ethiopian coffee (Hawaiis coffee is doing just swell).
Like, be for real, what kind of domestic banana industry do we have? We don’t, are we seriously going to be “investing” into banana crops in America? Tariffs on bananas is bananas.
> There will be more of a hit as we transition to domestic manufacturing, but it will generate jobs, investment, and keep money in our economy.
That's not how it works. It protects inefficient companies, reduces competition, and lets them pocket more of consumers money. I'm sure they will 'share' it with their labor force.
The US is and has been fully employed without it, so it can't really add jobs. The US has plenty of investment, and it will cut foreign investment - many of those factories are owned by foreign companies. It shifts the workforce to less productive work which will hurt the economy as well.
It will keep money out of our economy too. Economics doesn't work by keeping money in your pocket.
> There will be more of a hit ... but it will generate jobs, investment, and keep money in our economy.
Have you heard of 'trickle-down economics'? That was the theory that if we cut taxes on the wealthy, they will spend/invest more and it will 'trickle down' to everyone else. Guess what happened? Only the first step - the certain one - ever happened. The magical future never did.
It's the same here. It's just a hit for the benefit of a few; that's it. No economist thinks protectionism boosts the economy.
> In addition, other countries could simply loosen their restrictions and tariffs.
The DARVO idea that others are somehow blocking US investment - which dominates the world - has no foundation. Poor countries, of course, don't want their entire economy controlled by some trader on Wall Street.
> There will be more of a hit as we transition to domestic manufacturing, but it will generate jobs, investment, and keep money in our economy.
I would be very surprised if this is the result, but I'm willing to be very surprised.
For now, though, the manufacturing company that I work for, as well as a couple of others I know about, are likely going to close their facilities in the US because of these tariffs. It's simply not economically feasible to pay a tax every time we ship materials from one plant to another in a different country.
If they can't operate efficiently in the US, then they're looking at just ignoring the US market entirely. The rest of the world is a plenty large enough market to address.
Which restrictions and tariffs are these?
You want me to detail all countries' tariff policies?
Are you insinuating that these countries have no tariffs in place, or...?
I believe it's quite clear the imbalance of many markets. Automobiles being the most distinct, but every product tariffed varies by country.
edit: rate-limited, I'm not allowed to talk anymore I guess...
I’m not the same person, but I’ll go past just insinuating.
Almost no country has broad tariffs at the level that our “reciprocal” tariffs are being applied at.
Can you find any example in the top 15 of our trading partners that have tariffs that meet or exceed our “reciprocal” tariffs?
>> In addition, other countries could simply loosen their restrictions and tariffs.
You can keep your chlorine washed chicken. I’m sure most of the UK will be happy to pay 10% tariffs if it keeps those out.
Sounds good to me :)
You're missing out, our chicken is amazing.
But 10% on your imports is a good trade, I agree.
>you choose to purchase foreign over domestic, but you have that option.
where can i buy a domestic made iPhone?
>as we transition to domestic manufacturing
manufacturing is capital intensive and has low margins and thus is adversely affected by 2 things the most - unstable environment and high volume based taxes, which both has just significantly increased.
And thus you have the $500 billion investment from Apple to build here.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-commits-430-bil...
Like this one that they just waited out and never did?
Remember those five other times when Republicans partnered with companies and individuals to build factories here in the US only for it to never occur? Like the Foxconn factories in Wisconsin?
How many times are you going to fall for it?
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Taking it in the can? The US is the richest nation in the world! If you're #1 it's really hard to say other nations are taking advantage of you.
Americans have been taken advantage of, but it's not been other countries taking advantage of Americans, it's rich Americans taking advantage of poor Americans.
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> Decades of USA taking it in the can trade wise appears to be over, for now.
Except that the US hasn't been. Global trade has made the nation wealthier than ever. People who aren't wealthy have been taking it in the can, of course, but that's not because of global trade and these changes aren't going to fix that.
All that's going to happen is that if you aren't already very wealthy, you're going to get poorer.
Convincing the entire world to use its currency and sell it things cheaply is apparently somehow bad for America? I think you're about to get a very expensive lesson in economics.
>> Dems just need to spin these tariffs as the largest tax increase in US history
And then what? From a quick look at the 2024 Democratic Party Platform:
"Democrats will make billionaires pay a minimum income tax rate of 25 percent, raising $500 billion in 10 years. We’ll end the preferential treatment for capital gains for millionaires, so they pay the same rate on investment income as on wages"
Tax increase.
"We’ll put an end to abusive life insurance tax shelters, and stop billionaires from exploiting retirement tax incentives that are supposed to help middle-class families save"
Tax increase.
"We’ll eliminate the 'stepped-up basis' loophole for the wealthiest Americans"
Tax increase.
"Democrats will close the 'carried interest' loophole"
Tax increase.
"we’ll increase our new stock buyback tax to 4 percent"
Tax increase.
"Trump doesn’t care: he slashed the corporate tax rate to 21 percent, down from 35 percent. President Biden will raise that rate back to 28 percent"
Tax increase.
"And for those billion-dollar tax dodgers, the President signed a historic 15 percent corporate minimum tax into law"
Tax increase.
"He also reached a global minimum tax agreement with 140 countries"
Tax increase.
"Biden will double the tax rate that American multinationals pay on foreign earnings to 21 percent"
Tax increase.
"It means ending special tax breaks for corporate jets, and boosting fuel taxes on corporate and private jet travel"
Tax increase.
"We’ll also eliminate the so-called 'like-kind exchange' loophole that allows wealthy real estate investors to avoid paying taxes on real estate profits, as long as they keep investing in real estate"
Tax increase.
"It offers corporate landlords a basic choice for the next two years: either cap rent increases at 5 percent, or lose a valuable federal tax break"
Tax increase.
"We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education"
Tax increase.
"Democrats will make Medicare permanently solvent, by making the wealthy pay their fair share in Medicare taxes"
Tax increase.
"To cover those costs, the law finally restored a vital 'polluter pays' tax that had lapsed 26 years before"
Tax increase.
"fight for a global minimum tax that ensures corporations pay their fair share"
Tax increase.
Spinning the tariffs as a tax increase will do what for the Dems, exactly? Democrats love taxes on corporations, do they not think the consumer bears much of the costs of those taxes?
Well, tariffs are about as regressive as you can get, so I fail to see the contradiction with advocating higher taxes on the wealthy.
>> Well, tariffs are about as regressive as you can get
I don't know.
I used to be poor, maybe 60% of my income went to housing.
That wasn't imported.
My food was mostly sugar, wheat, corn, and high fructose corn syrup.
Also not imported.
Maybe the car. I had an older car that I worked on myself, but it was made in Japan.
That would be the main one.
The job I had back then is gone, I was a manual laborer and what I did for work in the early 1990's doesn't exist now, it has been automated away.
I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It was shitty work but I didn't have to talk to anyone. Are tariffs going to bring back shitty work for people like I used to be?
Whatever happened to all those losers of the year?
And it's simplistic analysis like this is why people fall for stuff like this.
Equating a tax on Billionaires to a tax on every import! A tax on corporate jets - it's laughable that people can't see the most basic economic differences in these.
I thought Dems loved taxes
Nobody loves taxes, including Democrats.
I still remember when Inverted yield curve was enough to predict recession. Good times.
I remember when the GOP was the free trade party, and you had to look mercantilism up in the history books because it was dead. President McKinley, from the 1890s, is one of Trump's economic role models. https://fortune.com/2025/03/10/trump-william-mckinley-tariff...
I wonder how pre-MAGA GOP'ers are reconciling this new reality with their existing beliefs.
I remember when we had skilled helmsman that steered the US away from recession despite all the indicators like inverted yield curve screaming recession.
Probably I'm wrong but if you can do stimulus ad infinitum there won't be recession, but you'll have inflation.
Yet it was that same administration that brought inflation back down to its targeted level.
Hopefully all this will kill forever the idea that the GOP is the party of business. They’re the party of the rich, like the Democrats. When people say both parties are the same, this is what they’re talking about. Not the religion or social justice masks the parties try to hide behind.
It's pretty hard as an indicator to miss this, considering that it's one of the very rare times a government loudly and proudly declares it's going to intentionally cause a recession.
A lot of supporters of the trade restrictions don't care. They're working people who don't own a lot of stocks and all they've seen is their jobs sent overseas.
To them, it doesn't even matter if things get "worse" for a while. Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
> Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
Then they’ve failed to imagine how much more difficult their life will become under excessive tariffs.
It’s also eye-opening to watch so many people in my extended family and social network cheer on DOGE and tariffs right until they impact their own jobs. Lot of people out there didn’t connect the dots about how their own jobs were going to be impacted by tariffs.
> Then they’ve failed to imagine how much more difficult their life will become under excessive tariffs.
Again, these workers don't have jobs. When the John Deere factory closes down in your town and moves to Mexico, tariffs sound good even if it's just to punish such companies and the abuse of their workers.
If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life. Factories may even return, and your life may improve. It's better than just accepting your situation.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
Prices going up on everything will absolutely make a difference in their lives. Even with government assistance and very low income, they still have to buy things to live - and they'll be able to afford even less. The poorer you are, the harder this is going to hit you.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
Categorically false.
Tariffs raise prices for consumers. These tariffs will make it even harder for them to make ends meet.
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They are absolutely buying goods that are manufactured in countries subject to these tariffs. They have to buy clothes and all sorts of everyday items, and since they can't afford to buy things manufactured in the US (when that's even an option), it's very likely they buy things that are made in China/etc at a higher rate that wealthier people. Even going back to your examples, flour will be going up in price, as well as gas and car parts.
Your comment insinuates that people complaining about tariffs are disconnected from those living in poverty, but thinking that those living in poverty won't be affected by prices going up around the board is a much bigger disconnect.
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You're not listening.
Oil may go down. Flour? The combine to reap the wheat will go up, why would flour go down?
Poor people in the hood still wear clothes. Clothes will go up.
That car on the verge of breaking down? Car parts will go up.
Poor people still have a supply-chain footprint that has many branches outside the country. At least some of the things they need are going to get more expensive.
I'm not listening or you don't understand.
Obviously you and all the downvoters have never been to the hood or know poor people.
They dont buy clothes. They are free.
They'll duct tape the car or steal parts from the junkyard.
Explain to me exactly what supply chain is for poor people.
Or driveby downvote from the hills of SV.
Do I have it right? The honest hard working American doesn't exist and won't feel it. Either we're criminally rich or just criminals? What a weird argument.
Yeah and when it does break down, the parts are going to cost more to fix it.
And what are they gonna do when their car breaks down catastrophically? Buy a used car? The prices of those will skyrocket once the price of new cars goes up.
Then really desperate people will steal cars as the value of them, and used parts start to skyrocket.
It doesn't even take half a brain cell to see how this works.
> They buy flour, they buy gas and they pray their car doesn't break down.
All of which are going to get a lot more expensive, too. We all swim in the same pool here.
I don't see that happening. As a matter of fact, I see staples such as flour going down in price.
That is a stated goal of the administration.
As of the time of this writing WTI is down nearly 7%. Expected, goal seeked and by design.
Certain products might go down in prices as retaliatory tariffs come into effect.
But again you’re missing all of the second-order effects, like people losing their jobs in the resulting contraction of demand.
You have a wildly simplistic view of the economy that ignores all of the well-understood second order effects that are inconvenient to your argument.
We'll see. I don't see any real path to the improvements you expect, but time will tell.
> They are not buying the latest igadget, or really anything chinese/gloablist for that matter, except for whatever junk at dollar tree. They buy flour, they buy gas and they pray their car doesn't break down.
You don’t understand how interconnected the economy is.
You don’t really think that flour appears on the shelves at the store without any coupling to internationally-sourced goods, do you? The parts for the farm equipment, the steel for the buildings it’s stored in, the vehicles that deliver it to the store.
This idea of the economy as an ultra-simplistic 1:1 line between raw product and the supermarket shelves is not how the world works.
Ignoring that, you conveniently glossed over the part about their car breaking down. What happens now when their car does need new parts? Tires wear out?
It’s also absurd to claim that poor people don’t enjoy things like access to cheap cellular phones.
Sure, I'll take you up on that offer. I grew up in a poor fishing family struggling to survive living in a trailer park so I'm very well aware of what it's like growing up in deep poverty.
Frankly I know more poor people than you pretend to know and the reality is that they are going to suffer far more under these tariffs than anyone else. All that stuff they buy at dollar tree because they have no other options are imported from all over the world because that's the cheapest stuff available.
You won't convince him, because he is not open to be convinced.
I think things will get ugly for the poorest people in society, but I am curious at how things will get ugly exactly.
I don't think price increases due to tariffs will be the worst if it. I think the perfect storm of higher prices, lower economic activity due to the halt in global trade, poor stock market perform performance, and ultimately economic contraction will result in mass layoffs, companies going out of business, and high unemployment rate.
Suddenly people won't even be able to find that odd job anymore.
Tariffs will have an larger impact on low income people because they act as a flat tax on goods. There is a certain fixed dollar value that everyone needs to survive the month, and that value just got larger while income remained the same. When you're poor the smallest increase in cost of living pushes you in to the red.
This is why inflation was such a huge issue. I fail to see how this is any different.
> This is why inflation was such a huge issue. I fail to see how this is any different.
This time it's vaguely patriotic to pay more, I guess.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
Of course it will, since price inflation is going to hit the low (or no) income people the hardest.
And if the government assistance you mentioned is all cut away, it's going to be much worse.
They’ll make things harder to afford but I get your point. They had one way to make money which was their factory and now it’s gone and orange man is promising he’ll bring it back. It’s a no brainer, of course you go all in on that one hope that you have.
> If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life.
That government assistance is also being threatened (often by adding work requirements to it), and those odd jobs can also go away or become much more scarce if the economy goes over the edge.
Finally, the cost of everything will go up, which will hit those that are scraping by with odd jobs and government assistance the hardest.
I hope it doesn’t happen, but when you assert things are as bad as they can get, that just doesn’t match the situation you described. They can get worse.
When their government assistance goes to 0 and the prices of everything they buy go up, I'm sure they'll notice.
This is the same group who voted based on the price of eggs increasing.
You might still notice the cost of everything you buy going up ~20%
Don't they have to buy things too?
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It does matter if things get worse and it's very uncaring to say otherwise. The import taxes are going to make wealth inequality much worse and significantly hurt not just almost all American's but large swathes of the world too.
The unemployment rate is near historic lows. Apparently there’s plenty of jobs going round.
Not that that’s going to last if actual economic headwinds hit the economy.
labour participation rate is the number you want to be looking at - unemployment excludes people who have given up looking
anectdotally, you dont see people dropping out of universities en masse because businesses are desperate for workers and willing to make it worth students while to put off or skip the education.
you see that in and out in tech/software dev, but not across industries
Plenty of his supporters are SMB owners or people that work in trades/factories. This is not a revolution of the indigent. What these people don't realize is even if they make 200K a year and drive an 85K financed F-250, they are effectively in the same class as someone making 50K a year managing a Dollar General. These people have no class awareness and they voted in a representative of the ultra wealthy intent on pillaging our economy. Some may believe that Trump will usher in some era of economic prosperity but they are wrong.
On the other hand Trump will deliver on another, implicit promise to them, which is inflict pain and suffering on a great deal of people they dislike for whatever reason.
> What these people don't realize is even if they make 200K a year and drive an 85K financed F-250, they are effectively in the same class as someone making 50K a year managing a Dollar General.
More people making under 50K per year voted for Trump in 2024 than voted for Harris.
Your numbers are off.
I didn't say people making under 50k weren't voting for Trump. I was saying it's not exclusively some revolution of the poor (statistically it can't be). My larger point is it doesn't matter whether his voters make 50k or 200k, they are the lowest class in American society and voting for Trump and his attendant policies is against their own economic interests.
And despite economic prosperity being the cornerstone of his 2024 campaign, somehow it isn't anymore. Now his supporters have pivoted to this idea that we must all live in a kind of austerity so that collectively (waves hands around) we enter a new age of American prosperity. Literally this sea change in MAGA sentiment has happened in the last six weeks. It's baffling.
> On the other hand Trump will deliver on another, implicit promise to them, which is inflict pain and suffering on a great deal of people they dislike for whatever reason.
Not so implicit, "I will be your retribution".
And this part is very much a normal Republican position. The realisation that Americans will vote for a policy which hurts them so long as it's positioned as hurting the people they hate was key to Republican success.
"Nobody gets kicked in the head" loses in American politics if it's up against "Everybody gets kicked in the head, yes those awful people you don't like will get kicked in the head"
And when your implementation "accidentally" forgets to kick the wealthy in the head? Well the important thing is you kicked people in the head - you're not one of those scum who don't want to kick the awful people in the head.
> Not so implicit, "I will be your retribution".
I don't particularly like the idea of tariffs, but it is what it is.
Having to put up with policies you don't like is simply the social consequence of applying unpopular policies for four years in the other direction.
If the opposing party supports outsourcing, importing of labor, no protections for domestic industry, then they should expect retaliation from people who don't like those policies and who have the means to vote in someone who will push for whatever they view as corrective action.
This is a democracy. If one party pushes unpopular policies (unpopular to the other side), don't be surprised with the opposition pushes back.
Agreed, Glenn Greenwald of all people had it pegged 8.5 years ago when Trump first won and with Brexit:
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-... https://archive.ph/tfd39
I guess Vincent Bevins has the money quote:
> Los Angeles Times’s Vincent Bevins, who wrote that “both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years.” Bevins went on: “Since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.”
The problem is that the actual solution is taxes and redistribution but if you try that, they’ll lynch you (the very people who would benefit most from it). Better to have weird Trumponomics than that.
I don't know - we had more equitable taxes in the mid 20th century, and now that time is thought of as the golden age of America.
I don't think it's that simple. First, the US economy was supercharged by virtue of being the only economy left humming along after WW2.
Also, in the mid 20th century, the top income tax rate was 91%. Now it's 37%. Capital gains taxes were also much higher. The wealthy were taxed much more heavily during our economic boom times than now. It's not hard to think that having a more equitable distribution of wealth, not taxes, might have something to do with it.
All the voters did is allow the elites in rich countries to buy the rest of the country on the cheap once the American economy crashes and burns.
They don’t have to own stocks. If they like eating and buying household goods then this will affect them negatively. It will help very few people for a long time, even if it goes perfectly to plan.
I’d be extremely surprised if other countries meekly do what Trump wants. There are many options on the table, and change is more likely in a crisis.
> To them, it doesn't even matter if things get "worse" for a while. Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
Really? How do you even know that? You think another round of price hikes within the year is unimaginable, which what the economic consensus on immediate tariffs this high predicts?
The unemployment rate is 4%. The amount of liberation day tariff supporters is an order of magnitude higher than that. Pretending that things can't get worse is dangerous and stupid.
> Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
Yet.
Things can always get ~~worst~~ worse.
Things cannot get worst because they can always get worse.
If people don't want things to continue to deteriorate, then the economic disenfranchisement of the American working class must be put to a stop. It's really pretty simple.
> A lot of supporters of the trade restrictions don't care. They're working people who don't own a lot of stocks and all they've seen is their jobs sent overseas
A lot of us were also in the market before the pandemic (aka before 4 years ago), so we remain in the green.
Personally, it's a win-win.
1. Based on past tariff action, the current tariffs will not be repealed by any future administration - there is plenty of harsh feelings amongst some of us Dems who were IRA adjacent to France and Germany's lobbying against the Green New Deal and calling it "protectionism".
2. This plus DOGE has caused short term pain as reflected in the NY by-elections leading to Stefanik's nomination to the UN being pulled.
3. Those of us with some sympathy for economic nationalism but don't caucus GOP have been vindicated, but have a messaging tool now as well.
4. We can finally take the UAW and ILA national leadership behind a shed and pull a metaphorical old yeller. There's no point trying to make peace with National when much of their local leadership leans GOP. Makes it easier to concentrate on AZ, NV, and GA - states where the demographic and union makeup is completely orthogonal to the UAW and ILA's cadre. Makes it easier to help the AFL-CIO as well.
5. Sullivan and Raimondo's doctrine has been vindicated. Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, and India have now been made much more cost competitive than China or transshipment via Vietnam or Thailand - either you reduce transshipment from China or your competitors in apparel, textiles, and electronics are subsidized. Vietnam already has sent their Dy PM to negotiate as we speak to reduce tariffs.
Europe also has no option but to diversify away from China as well. Either you fund a state selling intermediate parts to Russia in Ukraine, or start building domestic defense and industrial capabilities like that which existed before the 2000s (which they are now doing).
-----
Already, some of my peers from my previous life have started testing the waters for a Dem equivalent of the Tea Party. Lot of realignment coming in the next 2 election cycles.
curious what the Dem equivalent of the tea party means? Does that mean a libertarian streak before populist takeover, or is that meant more in terms of a critical voting block to extract concessions?
As in a more populist or outsider type tinge (or vocalizing those positions).
I'd disagree with a number of their foreign policy choices, but the house doesn't really set foreign policy, and the hawkish policies I'd want will anyhow be pushed by this admin but not revoked by any incoming admin.
There's a pretty solid crop of state assembly members and outsiders who can competitively primary out a number of older generation Dems, assuming a model similar to Illinois and NY 2020 is followed.
> every economic headwind imaginable.
Freaking what? Are they food insecure? Facing a military onslaught. Come on.
The local food bank I donate to sends out a quarterly newsletter and the number of families it serves has more than quadrupled since 2020.
I think this is the primary reason the Democrats have been losing, clearly voters are feeling economic hardship in a big way, and ignoring it or belittling the point is what lost voters.
We can't focus on social issues when the hierarchy of needs isn't being met.
Historically a lot of Republicans have derided poverty statistics and poverty programs because the people on the programs “all have big screen TVs”[0]. I’m not sure the politics are as clear cut as you indicate.
[0] https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/air-c...
I mean, I watched and participated in the US Election last year, it was extremely clear to me that Republicans focused on economy, and Democrats focused on social issues.
The Republicans won, which is an indictment on the Democrats messaging in my opinion.
I'm not even talking about the merits of which party has better ideas, or if people are voting against their own best interests. But I think the party that said they'd do "something" to make the economy better is the one that won.
Why Democrats don't hammer on retraining and education so that more people can participate in the services and information economy confuses me greatly. Manufacturing isn't coming back, at least not immediately.
> that Republicans focused on economy, and Democrats focused on social issues.
That impression is partially an artifact of the information space disparity. Republicans spent a ton of time talking about social issues and the Democrats talked about lot about economic issues, but coverage of those things was wildly uneven. If you had any exposure to the Hispanic communities affected by deportations now, ask how many of the people making “I didn’t know he’d deport hard-working people like …” comments spent 2024 hearing a ton about how trans were threatening women or drag queens were grooming kids to be gay on WhatsApp/Telegram, and not coverage of the many, many times widespread deportation was promised. It’s almost a cliche to find people who thought they were voting for lower prices and are just now realizing that tariffs are taxes they pay, and that’s a function of where they get their news.
> Republicans focused on economy
The Republicans focused on sabotaging the economy, which they now are doing. I don’t get why that’s a winning message.
Yeah I definitely didn't say I agree with the methods proposed, only that it's clear that it struck a chord with the population.
Dems really need to focus on messaging that can resonate with those people. Things like vouchers for trade school to boost higher end blue collar jobs, etc.
Republicans also spent many millions on anti-trans messaging.
This is quite an anti-worker comment.
"They still have cereal and fast food and they're not getting shot so they're fine." LOL.
You're both painting polarized views. I'm from the rust belt where many of these disenfranchised can be found. Manufacturing isn't coming back. Tariffs are only going to increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
I think the point was that these tariffs are hurting stocks because it is hurting workers, which hurts consumer spending. These tariffs are against workers primarily. The next time you see someone digging up a water main check their boots, the supervisor might be wearing Carhartt and Redwing, if they are a hipster, but the people who are muddy are typically wearing much cheaper imported equipment.
It's more that we shouldn't pretend that things could not be worse, which is what the person they were replying to was trying to say.
Because things can definitely get worse.
> Because things can definitely get worse.
Absolutely.
If people don't want things to get worse, then the abuse and disenfranchisement of the American worker must end.
That's kind of where we are at this point.
Its a perspective thing. I saw an interview a couple weeks ago of a man in his 30s saying he finished high school and couldn't find a warehouse job like his father did and had been working odd jobs ever since.
To my parents that was an unacceptable thing, had I finished high school and not done college (or some vocational school) I'm sure they would have kicked me out of their place. So not continuing my education was never an option, I had to, because from their perspective that was the only way.
This other dude never had this, his dad worked an warehouse job at some big box store more likely, went up the chain there and made a decent living for his family. The expectation for the family was that if their kids had done the same, it would have been fine, he said his father never even finished high school, but that isn't reality anymore for most people and I don't think this has been a culturally set reality in the US.
People were very much still expecting this would continue to be a thing but its very hard for you to do that in a place where there is very little manufacture and with so much tech taking over brick and mortar stores.
The thing with tech taking over the world, is it's taking over the world everywhere and the last few places where labor is still cheap are employing humans.
In so much stuff involving process automation if you go about building a new factory you're going to minimize your labor costs as much as possible. The only dumb jobs that remain pay very low and/or are back breaking, and everything else is a high tech job. On top of that process efficiency means that a single factory somewhere could easily produce all the product needed to meet world demand, the most difficult part would be meeting regulations in other countries. We are past the days where you need 20+ factories building the same thing in the US for most products. You build it in one place and put it on a truck with fast and cheap shipping.
People will keep crying for a past that no longer exists while the world changes ever faster.
> there is very little manufacture
The US has a ton of manufacturing, but few manufacturing jobs, because they automated a lot of the aspects of production. This was one the biggest concerns by Andrew Yang when running for president, lack of good jobs because of automation takeover.
I don't think the parent is seriously describing these people as actually facing every economic headwind, but is instead pointing out the lack of imagination on the part of the people supporting this policy.
Not OP, but a) "to them", and b) I would add that they are being nudged - ever so slightly - to believe in an exaggeration of the facts.
Are they food insecure?
You'll have been quoted on thirty different subreddits by the end of the week. This is hilariously tone deaf to the hardships many are facing.
Absolutely tone-deaf, but there's a real point.
"Things are terrible, so we have to do something!" No, you have to do something that will help. Just "doing something" isn't good enough. And if you think "things can't get any worse", yeah, they can. A lot worse.
Don't make random changes just because things are bad. You need changes that will help, which is a lot harder.
> Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable
Horseshit. The most fervent Trump supporters are upper-middle class professionals who are bored with their lives. Hence the frequent boat parades for Trump. It's why the huge, expensive trucks are the ones flying the Trump flags. And practically all of them have 401ks, which means they are at least indirectly invested in stocks.
That may be your lived experience, but it doesn't match the data.[1]
The working class is shifting to Trump because his rhetoric matches what they want to see: trade restrictions, protections on domestic labor, and the return of good/stable manufacturing jobs.
Trump is almost certainly not the best representation of the American worker, but he's winning because he, at least, tells them what they want to hear.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5183060/why-working-cla...
sources? I can't find any Trump official that is claiming they are trying to intentionally cause a recession.
"minimum 10% tariff on all imported goods and materials" certainly sounds like a way to increase costs.
Increasing costs seems generally worse for an economy than decreasing costs.
I feel like most people could follow this logical chain of reasoning to a conclusion of "thus you have a elevated risk for an economic recession compared to the state of affairs before the tariffs."
I haven't announced I would post here therefore this post you are reading does not exist.
“WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” Trump said in a social media post. “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”
https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-china...
Or as Lord Farquaad put it: "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/kaboom-elon-musk-predicts-...
They have been told many times and have stated that they accept that as a consequence.
Does he need to say the word recession? How direct does he need to be?
https://time.com/7266187/trump-recession-tariffs-us-economy-...
From five days before the election...
https://www.vox.com/politics/381637/elon-musk-donald-trump-2...
“If Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit - there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…Market will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy.”
Musk replied, “Sounds about right.”
There's a theory going around that the administration wants to crash the market so they can buy everything up for cheap, in a similar way to what happened in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
At the same time though it seems like the current president has always been pro tariffs even though they are almost always bad for a economy, the reason why the admin is applying a lot more of them is because almost everyone left in the admin's circle is a yes men.
not buy up everything, but make US national debt servicing cheaper once the interest rates go down (and recession will bring them down).
I highly doubt the current administration can play that kind of 3d chess. Just simple populism.
It's both an interesting and tragic phenomenon that seems much broader:
Plausibly, fashion is primarily about sex, especially at the ages when humans are most sexually active. And possibly changes in fashion are really second-order effects of changes in sex:
The most shocking thing, researched and reported but I don't think people grasp the significance, is that young adults are having much less sex.
Sex is among the most fundamental human drives. People can't stop themselves, which is why IMHO it gets such attempts to restrict it, by law and custom and shame, across time and place (to varying degrees). You can be sitting there, clearly knowing you shouldn't do it, and it can be very difficult to stop. All those efforts to stop people, by cultures, religions, governments, parents, etc. have widely failed - people still have pre-marital sex, commit adultry, get drunk and screw, hire prostitutes, watch porn, etc. (I'm not judging.)
Incredibly, now something has actually managed to significantly reduce sexual activity - and among people who are perfectly free to do it. Has that happened before in history (serious question)? Where/when/who is it now happening for and not happening? Speculating on why is perilous without evidence - imho it's just disinformation. But whatever the cause(s), it's a signal of something very serious.
Wearing plainer clothes is possibly just a follow-on effect.
Anecdotally it’s the triple whammy of depression/anxiety, social isolation, and scarcity/precarity.
The precariousness I think is more of a factor as the long term poor have still managed to survive historically. The randomness and changing social safety nets and possibility of needing to migrate to survive is probably a big factor.
It feels like we’re all bracing for the end of the world all the time.
Procreation (or lack of it) is voting “no candidate”. It’s the only control anyone has over their life today.
We were already in a deep recession for regular Americans starting in 2020. Double housing and transportation costs.
The market crash just spreads the pain to the investment class and retired boomers.
So, instead of striving for a better life, you are saying they took the approach if I'm going down I'm taking you with me?
Class warfare is as old as time. It's your mistake to wave aside human nature.
I got downvoted here the other day for saying Republicans are low-information voters.
My friends and countrymen: welcome to Trump's vision for the US. He is doing exactly what he said he would.
And honestly, you should have been downvoted for calling them "low-information" voters. Not only is it condescending, you simply discounted them for being part of the "other" party. Perhaps they are very informed - maybe much more than you regarding the deficit, the economy, their frustrations, etc.
It is great to have a spirited debate, but to call people derogatory names simply because they don't share your viewpoint is the wrong path to take.
Anyone who isn't afraid of woke can see certain voters were demonstrably taken in by transparent demagoguery. There are consequences to actions and beliefs, criticism can happen, people are sometimes wrong and we can acknowledge that without pearl-clutching. "Low information" is specific and actionable, unlike "stupid". Sometimes one decision was better than the other and we can only progress by understanding that, despite any hurt feelings. Sorry, no participation trophies today!
> Anyone who isn't afraid of woke can see certain voters were demonstrably taken in by transparent demagoguery.
How is this different than the decision-making process of many Democrat voters? Trying to make any rational arguments on "certain issues" gets you labelled as a fascist, racist, bigot or all of this (and more) at the same time. There's nothing rational about this kind of approach.
It seems to me that the left has become lazy and often assumes that something must be rational because they believe it.
There is no popular left in the US, we have a center-right neoliberal party who rat-fuck all competition to the point their base has given up.
The corporate owners of social and news media pick the issues they want people to talk about and it is never anything I think is particularly compelling. Why do we care about a tiny fraction of a fraction of the US population's preferred pronouns again? Because nobody has to spend any money to fix that, unlike actually important things like environmental collapse.
I think it is foolish to think that just because it was easy to tear something down, it will be easy to build it back up.
People are pissed off about the tanking economy and the brain-dead tariff approach, even though Trump said he was going to do this.
We know what tariffs do, it has been proven over and over again. What conclusion am I supposed to come to, after witnessing the predictable clown-show since January? We lost 5% today.