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Trump Has Already Botched His Own Bad Tariff Plan (www.theatlantic.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Could it work? Like the original plan, this is not a good one by any means. Attempting to negotiate new trade deals with almost every country and territory in the world, some of which are uninhabited, poses a formidable diplomatic challenge. (Do penguins have a trade representative?) There is very little in Trump’s record to suggest that he’s going to pull it off. The fact that he is freezing domestic investment decisions in the meantime and risking stagflation or a recession is going to undermine his leverage rather than increase it.

We’re the ones who are waging a trade war against the entire planet. Attempting to intimidate all other countries at the same time is a bit like a school bully walking into the cafeteria and announcing that everybody has to start handing over their lunch money on an ongoing basis. The strong-arm method is best suited for one-on-one negotiations, rather than giving everyone an incentive to band together in self-protection.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Donald Trump had a plan. It was not a good plan, or even a plausible one. But it was, at least, a coherent plan:

Nope. You lost it. No need to keep reading. Publications that pretend this shit isn't insanity have no credibility.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean... This has been the plan all along - he isn't doing random things, he's badly implementing a plan dreamt up in the '30s

Greenland Canada and the Panama canal, putting tech billionaires at the helm, crippling the government, isolationism... It's all part of the same plan.

It seems random because we keep getting references to the end goals at totally random times, and even then every move seems to be based on largely AI generated placeholders from project 2025 pulled out in random order

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

I do like that we've now had two photos that showcase his bald spot. Maybe there are more that I haven't seen.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

They assume that destroying things isn’t the plan.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

That photo is hilariously bad

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

A coherent and convincing argument of how fucked we are economically. Fun!

[–] humanspiral 1 points 1 month ago

surprise unjustified attack on whole world simultaneously with complete crackhead formula

It's also an attack on multinational political donors from US. And an attack on whole US economy.

There's some political commentators who justify this as long as it creates certainty. "These are now the immutable rules to do business". Outrage at craziness gives hope of reversal. There is no way anyone in the US is placing orders from countries with high tariff rates in last 2 days, or next week until chaos is reversed. 300 points a day drop in S&P will reverse it one day.