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Sylvia Rivers's avatar

I do not believe for one minute these tariffs are a negotiating tool, or to bring in new factories.

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Jon Margolis's avatar

They are the product of a diseased and diminishing mind.

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Lisa Ramos's avatar

It takes a lot of money and time to create new working factories and Americans want living wages and benefits with those jobs.

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Judith Swink (CA)'s avatar

Which is precisely what President Biden began with the Infrastructure Act and the CHIPS Act. I wonder what's happening with the funding for those factories, most of which are in Red states? Are they stalled bcz funding was held back or clawed back?

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Tor Iver Wilhelmsen's avatar

They are to weaken the share value of companies so they can be gobbled up by billionaires and their companies at a sale price.

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Sylvia Rivers's avatar

Absolutely! Like always. Reds always do this in some fashion.

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Pam McCullough's avatar

Even if it were about bringing in new factories, those factories would not be built and operational in his term.

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Sylvia Rivers's avatar

100%

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Stephanie Keeley's avatar

We’re more in need of ending the Pandemic of Trumpism and the GOP destruction of America! 👿🔥

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MsGabriel's avatar

And with the latest trade-paralysing symptoms of the Trumpvirus, it looks to be as powerful as the coronavirus in shutting down world trade.

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Natalie Burdick's avatar

When trying to understand Tr*mp and his devastating tariffs, it's not complicated.

His guiding principle is that he's a wannabe mob boss—these tariffs are nothing more than extortion, i.e., a protection racket.

Cambridge Dictionary Definition: an organized illegal activity in which a person (or group) tries to get money from someone by using force or threats.

Since he's announced his barrage of import sales taxes, he's wiped out $10 TRILLION in stock market value, all in order to shake down countries, industries and/or CEOs—dangling tariff exemptions he can dole out, or deny, based on how willing they are to bend and scrape and pay up.

The nonsensically-derived but no less disastrous tariffs are just the latest (though certainly most sweeping) example of a lifetime of corruption and grift; his self-enrichment is the ONLY basis for starting a trade war.

For this jury-determined rapist, twice-impeached traitor, and 34X-convicted felon and chaos monkey, the cruelty of hurting working families, seniors, farmers, and our (heretofore) allies and trading partners, is simply icing on his layer cake of corruption.

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MsGabriel's avatar

Not to mention the serially failed businessman, with numerous bankruptcies -- now busy tanking the US economy.

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Judith Swink (CA)'s avatar

Lucian Truscott's article yesterday lays out exactly how Trump bankrupted his Atlantic City casinos. Excellent read. https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/trumps-tariffs-theyre-not-bait-and?publication_id=255301&post_id=160908317&isFreemail=false&r=712xe&triedRedirect=true

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GabrielM's avatar

Thank you for the link!

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Becky Daiss's avatar

The leopards are coming for the faces of the so called “civil liberties” faction of the far right. The group suing to stop trump from his tariff madness are funded by the the rightest of right wing koch brothers and leonard leo. The hypocrisy abounds. Dumb trump was only supposed to reduce the power of the government over the rules and regs they hate. But don't mess with trade regulations without clearing it with them. That's upsetting the Constitutional separation of powers. Oops.

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pts's avatar

Love the leopards/faces allusion...

As politics makes strange bedfellows, so do far-right extremism and corruption make boundless hypocrisy and surreal irony.

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Judith Swink (CA)'s avatar

Yep, they've lost control of him. Even Musk is pissed off and likely to bail (if he hasn't already).

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Kay-El's avatar

I don’t want to hear that “overreach” bullshit from any GOP Congressperson ever again

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Gayle Eagan's avatar

Excellent analysis for those of us who are stuck in the weeds of this mess.

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Leu2500's avatar

“They felt contradictory because on the one hand Trump used them as a harsh negotiating threat to try and strike better deals with our trading partners. So that means the tariffs may not last long if an agreement can be reached.”

He revealed what “agreement” he wants when he was taking questions on AF One or somewhere since Wed: He’s shaking countries down for protection money. Like the mob-affiliated (Roy Cohn, the NY/NJ cement suppliers, & gambling interests) crook he is.

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Maureen's avatar

Is it possible he's tariffs are just so that Trump and his cronies know when to pull in and out of the market? And they are all making a fortune right now while we lose.

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Judith Swink (CA)'s avatar

Maureen - that, too, but impacts not limited to that.

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Teresa G's avatar

I read where MTG and FFOTUS and at least Eric Trump and who know who else did that all pulled out of the market the week prior to FFOTUS announcement of his “tariffs”

Think about that

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Judith Swink (CA)'s avatar

I believe that would qualify as "insider trading" but the Trump DOJ will do nothing about it.

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msbch2u's avatar

Makes us wonder Who Else got that tip to pull their investments, so they could BUY the deprecated value after they tanked... Surely he would warn his biggest donors, Right?

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Susan Feiner's avatar

Bringing new factories? Which industries do we want to bring back? Where will they be located. Answering those 2 questions is 2 years at least & every change in tariffs, exchange rates & interest rates affects the calculation.

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George's avatar

Coal! <Shake my head>

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msbch2u's avatar

Something he promised Last time he tried to destroy our economy. But never quite delivered. As Planned. All part of the Long Game Grift.

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Kevin Dale Green's avatar

Trump is completely incapable of admitting he's wrong. He has bragged too many times about how great tariffs are and how smart he is for realizing that for him to voluntarily give up on them. No matter how bad things get Trump will keep insisting that we just need to wait a little bit longer and everything will be the best ever. It's almost like electing a toddler to the Presidency was a bad idea.

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Mel's avatar

What I don't get is why the wealthy are so desperate for lower taxes. Most of them pay little to no taxes as it is. So why are the willing to sacrifice economic stability for 'lower taxes'? I know corporations want lower taxes, too, but it seems like they'll end up paying more in the long run and getting less. Why aren't the wealthy and CEOs making more noise in opposition towhat Trump is doing?

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Glen Brown's avatar

Trump's terrorism of tariffs has created national unity in nations around the world. They are united on doing as little business with America as possible. Brics, Canada, Australia EU... are looking for every way to say fuck you to the USA. China is becoming a better bet to do business with by the day.

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Glen Brown's avatar

I am not blaming them. I am in one of them. Even when the tariffs are removed. TRUST in America will be gone. Trust takes a long time to develop and once it is gone it does not come back any time soon. The next Biden that comes on the scene to say "we're back" we are going to play by the rules live up to agreements and be reliable the world's response will be for how long? Trust will never come back anything like it was before this awakening.

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Melissa Turner's avatar

I don’t blame the mentioned countries. Why would they want to do business here? This POS can't handle the office & rules with EO's. Seriously, WTAF? I'd say FU as well....🤯

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Glen Brown's avatar

I am not blaming them. I am in one of them. Even when the tariffs are removed. TRUST in America will be gone. Trust takes a long time to develop and once it is gone it does not come back any time soon. The next Biden that comes on the scene to say "we're back" we are going to play by the rules live up to agreements and be reliable the world's response will be for how long? Trust will never come back anything like it was before this awakening.

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Betsy L's avatar

Several things:

1) Why would ANY company invest any money building anything in the US these days if whatever circumstances that made it look like it was a good idea to build a factory or a business could be wiped out by an executive order by the next president? That's aside from the years it would take any company to build something here, and the paltry wages they'd have to pay American workers in order to compete with Vietnam and Bangladesh. Not gonna happen.

2) Who are these 70 countries that Dumpy claims are calling to grovel at his feet for a better tariff deal? Not Canada, not the EU, probably not the UK, and definitely not China. There might be three, but not 70. Dumpy's making up numbers because it makes him feel good. He's probably riding really high these days because the entire world is talking about him. That's all that matters in his fantasy world.

3) Aaand I forgot my other points. But they were good ones, I promise.

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Teresa G's avatar

I know

When he was asked the specific countries, he said he wasn’t going to say

Which means that either few to none have really called

The large countries are uniting together

They can outlast us

FFOTUS doesn’t even understand tariffs or world trade

Somebody please put him out of our misery

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Tor Iver Wilhelmsen's avatar

"You don't know them, they go to a different school."

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KL Pierce's avatar

So far only the war criminal Netanyahu is giving any lip service to donnycon.

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msbch2u's avatar

They probably talked more about the Gaza Riviera than tariffs. Without cameras, of course.

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Charles Bastille's avatar

Obviously, again, a bunch of great points here.

One thing that never gets covered when it comes to Trump is that his lack of nuanced thinking is just so incredibly damaging to the country and the world.

Vietnam DESERVES breaks because the U.S. spent years torturing that country. Call them reparations if you want, but we should be doing what we can to help prop up that government, which has been very friendly to us.

I despise this man with every fiber of my soul, but the lack of nuance, his deep level of stupidity, drives me as crazy as the rest of it.

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Jon Margolis's avatar

So, a president needs to get congressional approval if matters having "vast economic or political significance" are at stake. What if they are only half-vast?

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Betsy L's avatar

Oh, they're definitely half-vast.

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Lisa Ramos's avatar

One way to reduce Billionaire’s taxes is to drastically reduce their wealth and income. Trump seems to have decided tariffs are the way to do that.

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