Summary
China has shrugged off the latest U.S. tariff hike, dismissing the Trump administration’s threats as a “meaningless tariff numbers game.”
Donald Trump’s move to impose tariffs “wiped trillions of dollars off Wall Street” and raised duties on foreign goods, claiming to bring back U.S. manufacturing jobs.
A White House fact sheet announced tariffs on some Chinese imports would rise to 245%.
China’s Commerce Ministry said the move “fully exposes the fact that the United States has become irrational” and vowed to see the trade war “through to the very end.”
What a weird timeline that we are rooting for China on this.
I am rooting for free trade. It’s stupid and inefficient for every country to try to manufacture the same goods.
What are americans going to do? Stop buying Chinese crap?
Once amazon warehouses are empty the tariffs are gonna be „paused”. In trumps own words „he has no cards”.
There’s two ways this works out.
- Trump’s regime doubles down, never backs out and holds firm.
Basically, you’re fucked. Chinese goods stop flowing, medical devices and equipment stop coming, tools and utilities stop being restocked. You’re on your own. Welcome to Thunderdome.
- Trump’s regime keeps this going until the backlash forces them to give it up.
Then we capitulate to China, end up paying more overall but not an impossibly high figure for our items and life goes on… only a little less swimmingly.
My bet is on #1. Stock up on ammo and food, road warrior.
… and TP. don’t forget to stock up on TP
Those who don’t will have to take brown-town to the shower nozzle.
This is completely unrelated but what’s with the subscript opening quotation marks? Is that a standard in a specific language? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.
Iphones do it by default. At least for my polish-english mixed keyboard (which sucks fat cocks)
German, for example, uses them
Thank you
No we are just gonna keep buying the cheap crap at the new tariff price because we have no financial literacy in this country and easy access to credit.
Not at %245…
Trump has already lost this war. The war he started because he’s stupid as fuck. He’s going to die before he sees the results of the chaos he reigns.
Have you seen him recently? Sometimes he neglects the orange deck stain, and his skin is grey and ghoulish. I swear if he didn’t have some necromancer keeping him alive, he’d have died 20 years ago.
But but but the DR said he’s perfectly healthy due to all the strenuous golf we’re paying him to play
It also said he’s 6’3" and 224 lbs. I’m calling BS on both of those.
Imagine if he walked the courses? He could lose so much weight.
He got the highest marks!
Trump is going to loose this trade war in 6 months or less.
We at about to have Covid level disruptions to our supply chain. Over 80 cargo vessels have canceled sailings. Think about the amount of goods we are not going to get in 3 weeks time. Yeah China will loose money and will be hurt by the trade war but they can find other markets.
The USA is going to have epic supply chain disruptions. We wont have consumer goods or components for manufacturing within 6 weeks. It’s going to be a shit show unless Trump backs down.
https://www.asiafinancial.com/transpacific-cargo-trade-decimated-by-trumps-tariff-war
It happened in his first term when he pull this tariff crap. All of our projects came to a stand still because we couldn’t get gear. The same thing is about to happen again.
lose*
China is not without a butt load of economic problems already. We are their biggest trading partner. I agree we, the US, is fucked, but China is about to be as well. There will be no winners here.
China has a much greater tolerance for pain than the US for a multitude of reasons. China is also in a position to bolster trading relationships with other nations since it has not gone scorched earth like the US.
The US holds disproportionate purchasing power for its size but it’s still has far less than 50% global purchasing power. China and most other countries will find other partners to trade with while the US isolates itself further.
The only reason the US holds 20% of global purchasing power is because of mutually beneficial relationships with other countries. Purchasing power will slowly erode over time if Trump continues on his current path.
The US is really overestimating its leverage here and, being a fairly overmiliatarilized nation, one can only hope it doesn’t turn to violence once things go south.
The soft power and better relationships China creates with other countries looking for a trading partner that is consistent… China playing the LOOOOOOONG game.
No there will not be. But Xi is a full on dictator and Trump still has congress to answer to.
But this is a Covid level supply chain event. Once the economy starts to grind to a halt and inflation kicks in on common household items Trump will come under pressure to back down.
Lmao. Could be 2400% and it still wouldn’t matter. China already has the pipelines to circumvent all retaliatory measures including Chumps tariffs.
Remember how China exposed all the luxury brands? It’s that. Send the products to Vietnam or Brazil or somewhere. Get a domestic label sewn on and bingo.
Xi is playing chess. Chump is playing with his own feces.
Once again I miss competence. Just - plain old competence. Knowing a goddamned thing.
Unfuckingbelievable we’re here again. The fucker almost wiped out the planet last time with a virus. Gotta give him another at-bat eh? Fucking idiots.
In Trump’s defense, its easier to shove a turd through the round hole than a square peg. Especially if it’s liquid McD’s turds.
“That’s right, the turd goes in the SQUARE hole.”
Wafflestomping all the way down
I mean, that’s still a lot of extra cost and red tape, and the guys sewing labels will eventually start sewing everything else.
It rarely adds 200%, though. At 125% the talking head were already saying the US was in effective embargo territory, so it is kind of meaningless.
Brazil
wow i WISH we were doing any kind of significant manufacturing here.
do you know where someone could acquire those higher end products through other channels? some Chinese or other website selling quality products for cheaper than the brands but still for a profit for them?
The AI slop machine got Trump’s name right, but whiffed entirely on the author of the book.
Oh, I thought that was just the ghostwriter. Although I suppose I should be surprised that he’d share credit on anything with anyone.
Wait you mean Tow Glhvartz didn’t write it? Next you’re going to tell me it isn’t “Domale’s inside look at his lime of fomim sun thant the om curayer”
Still i’m kind of impressed that I glanced at this name and it felt right to me.
Lmao
Trump kinda has a Lloyd Bridges look going on, on that front cover.
“By then my lungs were aching for air!”
gtfo with your AI slop
wow grandma you look really different than I remember you!
China can live without us. We can’t live without them. Go into a Chinese house and remove all the items made in the USA. Now try that in an American house and tell me what’s left.
If Americans see one empty shelf, there will be weeping and panicking in the streets.
There will also be shooting and looting
I can only picture Xi Jinping swimming through a pile of rare earth minerals like Scrooge McDuck, while a call from Trump rings, unanswered.
…how anyone in the US sees this as positive is beyond my ability for faith and reason…
That elected a 34 times convicted felon. I’m not sure why anyone is surprised anymore.
…they shouldn’t be, this has been plotted and planned and WRITTEN down in project 2025…
And after Scotus appointed the incoming president dictator for life.
the trump voters largely do not want positive, they want big negatives for everyone else and are willing to accept negatives for themselves to get it
Money answers to neither faith nor reason and holds sway over the govt and it’s population.
What makes you think that they do? I imagine the biggest beneficiaries of this whole thing is a somewhat longer runway until Russian and Chinese demographic collapse.
Just the other day I saw a quick street interview on TV. In it, there was a barbershop owner who is also a Trump supporter, and she said that America will endure these difficulties. I got some serious sunk cost fallacy vibes from that interview.
I mean, I see it a positive that China is telling us to go fuck ourselves, which will greatly increase the economic hardship that the average white moderate faces, which might wake them up to the horrors that are happening around them. As for the trade war as a whole, idk I think the world will generally be better off cutting out America.
Because when the masses are robbed of a stable living and basic dignity, and when faith in institutions collapse in a society that puts everything on faith in institutions, coupled with an education system that isn’t built for intelligence and critical thinking but instead for indoctrination and farming obedient workers, people become desperate for “something else” or “anything else.” Because it’s inhuman and unnatural for homosapiens to live under those conditions, and it’s a desperate situation because these people are desperate, and the people at large have lost a sense of higher purpose (be it God or Country, I personally think we need to return our worship and devotion to Mother Nature.)
I too have challenged faith and reason given the current state of affairs, but I have faith in Mother Nature to return balance to the relations we’ve disturbed, and cut arrogant humans, who think they’re somehow above or seperate from nature, down to size. Like a deer or insect or algae that dominate a given area and upsets the balance, Mother Nature demands balance and harmony between relations and suffering is caused when those relations are disturbed. What gives me faith is the knowledge that all these politicians and their big fancy buildings could magically vanish today, and would go unnoticed as society keeps plodding along - as it’s us who grow and distribute the food, it’s us who drive the trucks and move the goods, it’s us who live on our land, it’s us who strive for and gift a sense of belonging to one another, it’s us who repairs things when they’re broken and it’s us who rebuild when things get destroyed. We are only intelligent or special creatures in that we exist to maintain Natures relations, and like every other creature we exist to survive. We don’t want to assume coersive power or overthrow our government, we want coersive power to be destroyed.
Domestic manufacturers will see a slight bump. Hopefully their raw materials aren’t so heavy affected though…
…they won’t be, this was all planned, please read project 2025
Project 2025 does seem to be the exact program they are following for most things. One of the next steps is to deploy the military for law enforcement inside the USA. This may happen in a few days’ time if the rumours of Trump planning to declare martial law on April 20th are true.
Because hurting the 1% is the only way this guy is going to be brought back to being an ineffective dictator. If the rich suffer, he will suffer.
They know he’s full of shit and even if he foolishly proceeds he will destroy the Republican Party’s electoral prospects for decades, lol. The only question is whether they do a military coup to retain power.
he will destroy the Republican Party’s electoral prospects for decades
Nonsense. Go spend some time on The Federalist, or the New York Post,or r/Conservative, or their pitiful “satire” site The Babylon Bee. They don’t live in reality. The real world is completely irrelevant to them. They could lose everything because of Trump and still think that their woes are the fault of woke Marxist liberals (an oxymoron, I know, but they don’t).
The diehards are not persuadable but not everyone in this country – or even a majority – is willing to lay down their lives and their livelihoods for Trump.
Trump has the lowest approval rating in history with independents
All five of them?
he will destroy the Republican Party’s electoral prospects for decades
That’s what they said about Nixon. Look at how that’s turned out.
Trump is an unserious president
He’s just getting extra silly with it.
Lol so randum!
I hope Trump holds long enough for the release of the next iphone
Trade Wars Are Good And Easy To Win
~ Sun Tzu, War of the Art of the Deal
They’re not good, but they are easy to win…if you have all the manufacturing facilities and are okay with plunging your country into depression for the sake of absolutely no benefit whatsoever.
Wait, what’s the definition of “win” again?
There is functionally no difference between a 145% and a 245% tariff.
The cost of going through a black market rather than a clear or grey one is likely already below 145% and the grey one is likely to fill most gaps in the long run anyways.
Grey market tariff skirting might be Canadian or UK companies slapping their logos and “made in X” marker after making a tiny change to the product. The barrier to entry on this is quite low as is the risk. If your profit is capped at 145% you still have a lot of room to make money.
Generally any tariff over 50% eats into profit margins sufficiently to end trade altogether.
Any escalation in tariffs above that is essentially just a symbolic dick measuring contest. China is being the adult in this situation by not engaging.
