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Trump's tiny mind is incapable of understanding anything that's not zero-sum. Trade, done right, is win/win.
Fuck everyone who voted for him. This is on you.
One should expect conservatives to vote for whomever is leading their party, regardless of how insane or hypocritical it would seem. They are united in this combination of a sunken-cost fallacy, stubborn pride and willful ignorance.
The non-voters are the ones who should draw the most ire. Apathy and defeatism had no place in the last election. There was a clear choice to be made to keep this country, as we knew it, afloat, and the non-voters did less than nothing to assist. Fuck them, ever so much.
The right to abstain is crucial to the functioning of a democracy. Some people didn't vote out of apathy or ignorance, but others rightly saw that the choice was between concentrated and diluted shit, and wanted no part of either.
If you want the votes of abstainers, GIVE THEM A REASON TO VOTE FOR YOU.
I am just going to say that the republicans/conservatives that continue to vote for the same party because its a tradition in their family is just as stupid as the non-voters. In no way shape or form should this style of “sports team” voting be a thing, instead vote on the party because of their policies and not the person because they wear red. In saying that the non-voters are just as idiotic, and yet all they want to blame rather then themselves is the Dems and their messaging. Jfc your telling me you did not vote because option “b” which was blatant in their authoritarian, mysognistic and racist messaging was not enough to vote for Kamala because they did not find her compelling. My god the idiocracy is alive and well over their.
This isn’t sports, or even a parliamentary system. You don’t have to just accept whoever “your” party nominates.
Too soon to say that, wait until Americans start starving.
It’s never too soon, or too often.
It's because he is not a businessman, he is a scammer and grifter.
The concept of a good deal where both parties leave the table satisfied is strange to him, he needs to have "the win" over the other side.
If he does not get "the win" he considers it a bad deal where he got ripped off, this is what he projects on the USA.
He will not consider WHY foreign trading partners do not want his inferior products. He is selling them and they must buy, and if they do not buy it is "how they rip off america".
This is the core of his thinking to strike back with his tariffs, he directly equates the unbalanced import/export lists as enemy tariffs on his goods.
Look at the list he showed, he gives Vietnam 54% tariffs "because they do it" ... but actually it's the 54% of import/export that is traded...
His whole reasoning makes no sense, it only does if you realize he has no knowledge of the workings of imports and exports and he plainly is not educated as a businessman at all.
If he does not get “the win” he considers it a bad deal where he got ripped off, this is what he projects on the USA.
Also, he's a shit deal-maker who often fails, even on those stupid zero-sum terms.
He pretends to be a businessman, and the system's built-in affirmative action for rich assholes and elite impunity keeps him afloat.
Your assessment of Trump's thinking is 100% correct, but I just want to pick up on this specific detail;
He will not consider WHY foreign trading partners do not want his inferior products. He is selling them and they must buy, and if they do not buy it is "how they rip off america".
And point out that actually in many cases its not that the American made products are bad, it's that the countries in question can't afford them. No one in Cambodia or Vietnam is buying an American made car or phone. But Americans buy loads of products made with cheap Vietnamese and Cambodian labour. It's precisely because that labour is cheap that Americans want those products, and it's precisely because that labour is cheap that no one there can afford American products.
This is big part of the flawed thinking behind these tariffs. They're trying to eliminate trade imbalances that are a direct result of America exploiting other countries for cheap labour, but they're doing so by acting as if those countries are somehow exploiting America.
No one in Cambodia or Vietnam is buying an American made car or phone.
There are American-made phones?
Trump's idea of trade is to do it at gunpoint, like the 19th-century Brits forcing the Chinese to allow the sale of opium. He doesn't know shit about business, but he understands extortion.
IIRC, Apple moved most of their manufacturing back to the US. If not, substitute some other US made product, it's really not essential to my point.
And yes, Trump's idea is to force it to happen, but that just doesn't work. You can't magically create a market for America trucks in Vietnam, because they simply do not have the money to buy those trucks. The only way to change that is to make Vietnamese people much wealthier, or American trucks much, much cheaper. No amount of "gunpoint" will change that fact. It's like expecting to make a million dollars by mugging a stranger in the poorest part of town; no amount of threat or force can make people hand over money they don't have.
Of course you're right in that it's financially not an option in a lot of countries, and I think Trump has no regard for that at all.
But I am more speaking about the things that bother him, like Europe absolutely not wanting the chlorine washed chickens, nor beef treated with growth hormones and antibiotics. I vaguely recall an eastern country also not wanting US grown fish for some reason that eludes me now. Over the last few years Trump has mentioned these things like they are an annoying stone in his shoe and was considering forcing the other trade partners to buy them anyway through some wild trade agreement.
The WTO has been aggressively attacking environmental and health protections as "regulatory barriers to trade" for many decades. Trump, as always, have jumped in to make it even worse.
Also, are those the type of jobs the US wants domestically? Sweatshops? In that case I guess the recent changes to working restrictions for teens in FL totally makes sense /s
So, obviously, this part of the question gets more complicated.
Ideally, no one should want sweat shop jobs to exist anywhere. Ideally we should all be OK with paying more for clothes in order to have them produced by people who are getting paid a decent wage and have decent working conditions.
And tariffs, if used effectively and smartly, could be a part of solving that problem. A government might choose to carefully and thoughtfully apply tariffs on goods made with sweatshop labour in order to encourage companies to raise their employment standards in a way that that creates better employment opportunities both in their country and in the foreign nations where the manufacturing is currently being done.
But that has absolutely nothing to do with the bullshit spewing out of the white house.
A government might choose to carefully and thoughtfully apply tariffs on goods made with sweatshop labour in order to encourage companies to raise their employment standards
When that was proposed against China's slave economy, they bleated about how it was an attack on their sovereignty.
Which is generally very good evidence that it's an effective strategy. If it didn't work, they wouldn't be complaining.
I don’t know if he’s even a scammer or grifter. He seems like a tool being used entirely by those around him, and he’s oblivious because they make him think it’s all his idea and it’s always such a great idea. It’s like elder abuse. But the elder’s an asshole so nobody feels bad.
Oh yes, there definitely is someone feeding him broken information. But in all things Trump has done in his life it's always been about the grift and how he alone should get the win. This is also what is being abused by those behind him and they slur him on.
Breaking News! Trump is complete moron….who could have seen this coming
The most superficial examination of trade deficits, a five minute YouTube primer by a highschool student could easily get you to this conclusion. It’s obvious that the intent is to crash the economy.
One easy example: get ready to pay a lot more for vanilla. Madagascar makes 50% of it, and gets a 47% tariff. Good luck picking up the slack with US domestic production.