What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Barrister]

Lesotho at 50%. Because they export diamonds and are too poor to import anything from the US. 
Iraq at 39% because we still buy lots of oil from them.  Same for Guyana.  Angola at 32% because also oil.  And diamonds.

Silly, silly shit.

The penguin memes are because there is a background 10 percent on everyone else and every territory is treated separately.  So for example, there is a 10% tariff imposed on the British Indian Ocean Territory.  Nearly all the human beings in the territory are US and UK military personnel posted to Diego Garcia.

Apart from the policy idiocy the lack of thought that went into this boggles the mind.  It's like a 5th grader trying to throw together a major school project and starting the night before it was due.

In the lead up to "Liberation Day" i heard on a podcast a trade expert explaining how tariffs work - that the US sets individual line-items for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of different specific types of goods, each with different tariff rates.  And that was just for WTO members, so the same rate applied to most countries unless if the US had an over-riding trade deal (like CUSMA).

They went on to say that while the idea of "reciprocal tariffs" might sound good at first, the practicalities of then going through thousands of line-items, then going county-by-country, to try and determine what tariff that country was imposing on the US, was almost impossible.  It would mean millions of different tariff rates.

And that's before addressing whether the reciprocal tariff was a good idea or not - like why impose a tariff on goods that the US doesn't produce in the first place, even if the other country did impose high tariffs on those goods?  I think the example was something like coffee. The US produces a negligible amount of coffee beans (I think in Hawaii only) and is unlikely to increase production, so who cares if Ethiopia has high tariffs on coffee?  A high tariff rate on Ethiopian coffee does nothing but increase cost to consumers.

But we've now seen that the Trump administration didn't even try to do any of that.  Instead it's this moronic ratio of imports to trade deficit.  And even then the US still imposes 10% even on countries it runs a trade surplus with - just because.

[Barrister]

There's also the matter of longevity. Tariffs on Canada costing 200k jobs on each side of the border affects Canada disproportionately more than the US. How long can Canada sustain a trade war?

Why do you think it will affect 200k workers in Canada?

I should have been clearer, it's a (badly explained) thought experiment meant to showcase that while both sides will be affected equally the smaller part will be affected proportionally harder. 200k is just a number I pulled from thin air. Make it 800k or 20k if you want.

So the typical advice to a kid facing a bully is that you need to stand up to the bully.

But if the nerdy kid being bullied stands up to the bully that's not to say the nerdy kid is going to beat up the bully!  Probably the bully is going to hurt the nerdy kid a lot worse than the nerdy kid hurts the bully.

But the bully still gets hurt.

If you don't stand up to the bully though, then the bully can just do whatever they want, whenever they want.

If Trump imposes the auto tariffs and Canada does nothing - then over time the auto sector is going to move almost entirely to the US.  Googling suggests 125k direct jobs, and 400k in spin-off jobs.

And that's just the auto sector.  If the US gets away with it in autos, what's to stop them from going sector-by-sector, wiping out Canada's economy?

So yes - a trade war with the US will hurt Canada more than the US.  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't fight it if need be.

[Syt]

[grumbler]

I don't understand how that works. So if the midterms come and go the House can then cancel the tariffs? And it can just do this? This wouldn't be a bill the President can veto?

The House and Senate can cancel the emergency declaration by simple vote.  No legislation needs to be passed.  No emergency = no "emergency" tariffs.

If democracy ever returns to the US, Congress needs to seriously reconsider every congressional act hat gives the president power in an "emergency" the president can declare on their own.  "Emergency" powers become imperial powers in the hands of autocrats.

[Syt]

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/03/politics/nsc-firings-trump-laura-loomer-meeting/index.html?cid=ios_app

White House fires three NSC staffers after president meets with far-right activist Laura Loomer

The White House has fired at least three National Security Council staffers, three sources familiar with the move told CNN.

The firings came after Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who once claimed 9/11 was an inside job, urged President Donald Trump during a Wednesday meeting to get rid of several members of his National Security Council staff, including his principal deputy national security adviser, claiming that they are disloyal. One of the sources said the firings were a direct result of the meeting with Loomer.

Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Alex Wong was not among those who had been dismissed on Wednesday, however, one White House official speculated to CNN Thursday that Wong could be out as soon as today, though a final decision remains to be seen.

Wong was one of the advisers specifically targeted by Loomer, who publicly questioned his loyalty to Trump and criticized him privately as a "Never Trumper."

One of the sources speculated that National Security Adviser Michael Waltz may have been reluctant to fire Wong because he has been embroiled in the controversy surrounding the leak of controversial Signal messages related to military strikes on Yemen that Waltz and his team have been under fire for initiating.

The three officials fired include Brian Walsh, a director for intelligence and a former top staffer for now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Senate Intelligence Committee; Thomas Boodry, a senior director for legislative affairs who previously served as Waltz's legislative director in Congress; and David Feith, a senior director overseeing technology and national security who served in the State Department during Trump's first administration.

"NSC doesn't comment on personnel matters," NSC spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement to CNN.

Waltz had been in the Oval Office for other meetings when Loomer arrived Wednesday for an audience with Trump and stayed as the president met with Loomer.

"Out of respect for President Trump and the privacy of the Oval Office, I'm going to decline on divulging any details about my Oval Office meeting with President Trump," Loomer told CNN on Thursday. "It was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my findings, I will continue working hard to support his agenda, and I will continue reiterating the importance of strong vetting, for the sake of protecting the President and our national security."

The Oval Office meeting with Loomer, which was first reported by The New York Times, took place as the president and his economic team were preparing the tariff announcement in the Rose Garden.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff who was among the advisers who worked to control Loomer's access to Trump during the campaign, was present for the meeting, an aide said.

It was unclear when the Loomer meeting was placed on the schedule, but the aide said the presence of Wiles and Sergio Gor, the head of presidential personnel, underscored that it was a sanctioned meeting.

Gor, who is seen as one of the president's most loyal aides, has been among the advisers who has been fielding complaints from MAGA world about Waltz.

Last week, Trump fired a California career prosecutor an hour after Loomer posted about him: https://apnews.com/article/prosecutor-firings-justice-department-white-house-25226702173e7b0aa86633d6c471c37e

[Iormlund]

I don't understand how that works. So if the midterms come and go the House can then cancel the tariffs? And it can just do this? This wouldn't be a bill the President can veto?

From what I understand, Congress can override a declared emergency after X days.

So the GOP passed a measure that stated that for emergency purposes, the legislative session would last a single day.

Yes, really.

[Syt]

[Syt]

I don't understand how that works. So if the midterms come and go the House can then cancel the tariffs? And it can just do this? This wouldn't be a bill the President can veto?

From what I understand, Congress can override a declared emergency after X days.

So the GOP passed a measure that stated that for emergency purposes, the legislative session would last a single day.

Yes, really.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/11/congress/house-republicans-move-to-block-vote-on-trumps-tariffs-00223947

[...]

Republicans' rule, which the House is voting on this afternoon, would block a vote on Meeks' resolution, or any similar effort, by declaring that the remainder of days in the first session of the 119th Congress do not qualify as calendar days, exempting the national emergency from a law that allows Congress to force a vote. GOP leaders argue it would protect Trump's authority on both tariffs and border security.

[...]

(The vote passed)

EDIT: Just one f the many insane details that get a bit lost in the chaos.

[crazy canuck]

There's also the matter of longevity. Tariffs on Canada costing 200k jobs on each side of the border affects Canada disproportionately more than the US. How long can Canada sustain a trade war?

Why do you think it will affect 200k workers in Canada?

I should have been clearer, it's a (badly explained) thought experiment meant to showcase that while both sides will be affected equally the smaller part will be affected proportionally harder. 200k is just a number I pulled from thin air. Make it 800k or 20k if you want.

I know that is why I am wondering why you picked equal affects in your thought experiment.  There definitely will not be equal effects.  The primary impact on Americans will be price increases (although they will also suffer job loses as the cost of their inputs also goes up). The primary impact on Canadians will be job losses, although at this point it is not clear how many job losses there will actually be.

For example, the Americans need Quebec's Aluminum, so Quebec workers are still going to produce that Aluminum and Americans buying it are just going to pay more for it. Same with lumber.

The one effect everyone is watching is the car manufacturing sector, but Carney's announcement about how to deal with that this morning will likely mean a diminished effect on Canadian workers, even then.

So the bottom line is the Americans are going to suffer much higher prices for pretty much everything they buy, while there may be not much of a negative effect on Canadians.

[The Minsky Moment]

Yes, but are other countries fighting back with those other tools?

Australia a top example, they can't be antagonistic towards the US cause then they'll be at the mercy of China. So the Americans can put up tariffs, demand no tariffs in return and the Aussies will fold.

The US is not that significant an export partner for Australia and lot of Australian exports are fungible commodities that can trade elsewhere.  Australia imports quite a bit from the US - some of this is military equipment and I wouldn't expect those flows to diminish at least for now.  But as to commercial products imported from the US, I would expect that for industrial and electronics, the Australians will seek to do preferential deals with countries like Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

[crazy canuck]

And American car manufacturing workers are learning quickly what this means for them.  900 workers have been laid off in Indiana in Michigan. They worked in factories supplying parts for Assembly plants in Canada and Mexico and those Assembly plants have been put on pauses of production.

[Valmy]

I think we will be seeing a lot of things put on hold as everybody wants to see if these things last.

[crazy canuck]

Yep

[The Minsky Moment]

Tariff calcs are there:

https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations

This is basically pseudo-social science.

Most of the cited articles are just calculations of price elasticities. None of them support this crazy formula.

The Soderberg article has the following premise:

With heterogeneity in export supply elasticities, we show that
 the optimal non-cooperative tariff set by an importer is no longer the
 inverse of a single elasticity. When varieties of a good are exported
 from countries with heterogeneous export supply elasticities, we
 demonstrate that the optimal non-cooperative tariff weights the
 relative contribution of each variety to terms of trade gains and effi
ciency losses resulting from the tariff. In essence, when the importer
 applies an identical tariff across multiple exporters with different
 export supply elasticities, each exporter yields a different terms of
 trade gain relative to its efficiency loss. The optimal tariff is therefore
 one that optimally weights each exporter's contribution to its total
 terms of trade gains and efficiency losses

A lot of words here but the key implication for the moment is that USTR is doing it completely wrong.

The main paper they rely on is Pujloas/Rossbach, which does not appear to have been published in a peer reviewed journal. They use a simple quantitative model to game out various trade war scenarios and come out with Nash equilibrium tariff numbers, all between 7 to 15%.  But there is no analysis as to what impact this would have on bilateral trade balance.  There is a welfare calculation which claims to show neglible effects in either direction with the largest effects being a small welfare loss from tariffs on the EU and Mexico and a slight gain from tariffs on China.

[The Minsky Moment]

The fact that the academic cited work is so weak or unsupportive may seem like a geeky-wonky point.  And it is. But it really is significant. On almost any other economic policy issue you could imagine, it is easy as shooting fish in a barrel to find supportive academic studies on virtually any side.  There are studies showing positive employment impact from minimum wage increases for example.

You really have to try hard to find an economic policy so incredibly stupid and damaging that it can't find proper support in a single published journal article.