It’s hard to deny at this point that we are at full economic war with China.
Personally, I think Trump bit off more than he could chew starting a trade war with the entire world. But I also wonder if part of that is to provide cover for starting a war with China. If he pushes back on EVERYBODY then he’s not picking on CHINA, right?
The feeling is… THE HOPE is… that the tariffs on the EU and South Korea and Japan and Canada and Mexico will be relaxed to normal “doing-business” levels. That way the world can keep turning without unnecessary pain.
But China, Vietnam, Cambodia… those tariffs and retaliatory measures seem to be sticking around for a while. And I don’t necessarily think they’re staying at +100% for years, but, even after they settle, they’ll be painful. Because overall this is a war with China.
It’s very telling that Trump’s original 25% tariffs on China rang all the alarm bells at the time, but when Biden had a chance, not only did he not revoke them, he expanded them.
I’ll say again that I disagree with Trump’s heavy-handed approach, with trying to get some cheap easy concessions from allies with all this posturing. I think Trump is making things MORE PAINFUL than they need to be. But ultimately there is a national security objective with Asia. Whether this is the start of WWIII or not, who knows.
Trump could not afford all the ridiculous bluster with Europe and the rest of the world.
Making such sweeping tariffs and backing down just a few days later looks pretty bad for him. With the hits to the stock market, the billionaires gave him a good talking to and, to his credit, he quickly course corrected.
Would have been better to not be so ridiculous to begin with, but whatever. It’s also weird that he opened up the Vietnam loophole again. But hey, let’s see what happens now.
305, Trump has no plan. The tariffs were a terrible idea.Someone came to him and force him to finally bend on the tariffs. Trump’s idea of how the world should work is basically 19th century. Guy is clueless. You have blind followers like Skeeter and GSC who have no clue how things work and have fallen in line. Anyone with a clue understands that manufacturing jobs are not coming back. The ones that do will have robots working them. This is a fact that these idiots just don’t get. They also don’t get that China, Vietnam and these asian countries along with India can basically get charged 1000x on tariffs and the only people it hurts is americans. China pays workers so low that americans will never be able to take those jobs. Even if they went to 1.00 dollar per hour, we cant compete. They are so below us on wages that is why what they make is so cheap for us to buy. Americans are not going to pay 3500 dollars for an i-phone. No matter how much BS these guys put out there a reality world exist. Tariffs are not fixing the problems. Look out the beating the stock market took. If Trump kept the Tariffs on it would have been another day under 1000 points. Instead the guy takes them off and the market takes off. Trump is not going to learn and we as Americans will end up paying the price. Trump has 90 days to get these deals in place or the Republicans will take a beating in the mid-term elections. Trump will probably settle with these countries with 10 percent and call it a day and act like it was a win for this country.
Trump could have done that without being so crazy everywhere else. He had initially hit them with a 25% reciprocal tariff, and they hit back, and it grew from there. There was no reason for him to do all the other stuff.
Let me ask you this:
Does Trump look tougher now that he implemented crazy tariffs and then canceled them a few days later?
How serious is China supposed to take this new 125% tariff when Trump might decide to cancel them in a few more days?
At this point China’s game plan is to wait till more billionaires complain to Trump and he backs down.
Does Trump look tougher now that he implemented crazy tariffs and then canceled them a few days later?
Depends on who you ask. Answers will likely fall in line with how they voted in November anyway. Also is “looking tougher” important? Or final results?