What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Razgovory]

I think it would be wise to be prepared for the possibility that tariffs would at least in part be accidental brilliancy.  I do think that a little bit of friction in trade may not be a bad thing, once you put a dollar figure on the costs of social upheaval and instability.  It would be counterproductive to set the narrative that tariffs would lead to unavoidable disaster, only for that to not pass.

I'm inclined to agree with you.  Tariffs are inefficient, but the cost-benefits we have from free trade have not been evenly shared. The gains from that efficiency mainly go to the top quintile and costs go to the bottom 50%.

Who pays for the tariffs, Raz?

The importer, why do you ask?  Also who suffers the most from offshoring?

I ask because you're being obtuse.

Do you think the costs and benefits are evenly shared?

[Zoupa]

Raz, every expert out there analyzes that Trump's tariff policy is going to hurt the middle class and lower income americans. That's short, medium and long-term. Believe what you will.

[crazy canuck]

It's going to be great next month when the jobs figures come out. 4 million new jobs and the chocolate ration to be increased for the 5th time since Trump became president. USA! USA!

 

[Zoupa]

[HVC]

It's ok for Russia to give trump his talking points, but they probably shouldn't provide him their PowerPoint slides too.

[Admiral Yi]

  Good move ex-lax.

[HVC]

[Tonitrus]

Good move ex-lax.

Smooth move. 

[Admiral Yi]

[Tamas]

The bigger class-based question for US is what kind of economic future is there for people without college educations?  Clearly there are some good jobs to be had for example in the trades, but the number is limited and those do require skills and qualifications that not all have or can easily get. 

Despite the burst of anti-intellectualism in 2025 USA and the bizarre assault on a US university system that is quite literally the envy of the world, it's very unlikely that future prospects will improve for workers with less educational qualifications.  That is likely to get worse not better.  And there is no trade policy in the universe that can fix that problem.

I assume that the GOP, like Orbán, scores worse the higher you go in surveying by level of education.

So it makes a lot of sense for them to de-fund and destroy as much education as they can. If they don't , they are spending money to decrease their voter base.

[grumbler]

Thanks to Google Gemini AI and tweaking the wording, the following is what I wanted to post without getting into pedantic wordplay (I simply used my initial post and put it through the AI).

'Trump's underlying principle of using tariffs as a tool to rebalance trade and protect domestic industries has remained consistent, is is the application and level of those tariffs that has shown significant policy swings, often in response to market reactions and ongoing negotiations.'

My problem with this assessment is that the facts don't bear it out.  Trump claims that the goal of tariffs is
1. To raise money.  So much money that, for instance, it will pay for all the child care in the US.
2. To stop the US from "getting ripped off by every country in the world." He place d tariffs on countries that have a trade surplus and on uninhabited islands.
3. To "bring all of those jobs back to America." Tariffs on imported resources and products make manufacturing in the US less viable, not more.

Those goals are mutually exclusive in any case. For instance, if they really worked in onshoring manufacturing, the revenue raised would go down, not up.

Trump's principal in setting tariffs is his sense of grievance. It isn't based on economic principals at all.

[Josquius]

From Switzerland things are looking grim. They've ended up with the 4th highest tariffs in the world due to there being a big American demand for luxury good and zero demand here for the sort of quality American goods represent.
That trumps calculations ignore services is particularly nasty.

Still. The US had previously strongly implied Switzerland would be given the same rate as the UK as... Well. Switzerland. Clearly not an enemy.
But the assessment is Switzerland is just too small for America to bother with (despite being americas 6th largest overseas investor)  and they've sort of defaulted to this calculated rate despite bending over cutting tarrifs on American goods to 0% and all sorts.

[The Minsky Moment]

The jobs report that caused Trump to fire the messenger is not showering glory on the tariff policy. Just focusing on manufacturing, 11K jobs lost in June alone, third straight month of manufacturing job loss. 

[Tamas]

The so-called tariff policy cannot possibly work when it is being drastically changed every fortnight. Who the hell would invest in such an environment.

[The Minsky Moment]

That gets back to the fundamental error of thinking that international trade negotiations can be treated the same way as haggling over the deal terms of a Madison Avenue commercial building.  In the real estate business, if you walk away from the table, it's not a big concern, there are always other buildings.  But the US cannot just walk away from the EU, Canada, Mexico, etc. You can't play "hardball" by deliberately acting unpredictable for six months to generate "leverage" because in the real world, real business still have to operate and secure supplies and make investment decisions while you are dicking around like a prima donna babbling about your super leverage. In the real estate business if you get more money or less money for say tenant improvement allowances, it doesn't impact the viability of another building down the street or another one in Chicago.  In international trade, second and third order impacts like that are unavoidable.  In the real estate business, any vaguely conscious person can look at a rent roll and interest costs and make reasonable decisions on price; in international trade, tariffs schedules are massively detailed and trade rules are fiendishly complex, to the degree that there aren't really overall international trade experts, but rather experts in subcategories like navigating rules of origin or handling dispute procedures.

I could go on but someone like Trump is uniquely unfit to handle this, a deficiency reinforced by the massive Dunning-Krueger effect resulting from his self-delusion, shared by many of his flunkies, that his experience scamming contractors on commercial builds gives him some insight in deriving optimal tariff schedules for nearly 200 countries.