Trump's tariff wars...long post.

[TimR]

He's a poker player with an empty hand that bluffs and hopes the other player folds.

 

If they don't fold, he goes bankrupt, but he doesn't seem to have learned that yet. 

[TimR]

5 minutes ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you're going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don't have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won't agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you're going to have to find another cabinet maker. 

 

This is the 'Lemonade Stand' effect in a nutshell.

 

https://medium.com/the-mission/the-american-dream-is-killing-us-5ce2ecd7ff70

 

 

[Skybone]

18 minutes ago, TimR said:

He's a poker player with an empty hand that bluffs and hopes the other player folds.

 

If they don't fold, he goes bankrupt, but he doesn't seem to have learned that yet. 

Thing is, it won't be him going bankrupt, it'll be the normal people who'll suffer as usual, while he and his lackeys walk away without a care in the world.

[Al Krow]

Nah. There will be fewer American kids dying of Fentanyl OD pretty soon.

 

Mexico have just folded and are sending 10,000 extra troops to patrol the border with immediate effect. Funny how easy that was for them to do, when faced with tariffs? 

[Woodinblack]

54 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Nah. There will be fewer American kids dying of Fentanyl OD pretty soon.

 

Or they will bring Fenranyl production back to the US, So I guess more local jobs.

[prowla]

It's a bit like here:

a. La-la land:raise taxes in the belief that there won't be an impact.

b. I wonder why revenues are down and the big money is going elsewhere...?

 

[tauzero]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

Nah. There will be fewer American kids dying of Fentanyl OD pretty soon.

 

Mexico have just folded and are sending 10,000 extra troops to patrol the border with immediate effect. Funny how easy that was for them to do, when faced with tariffs? 

 

There is a tit-for-tat there. To quote the Grauniad, 'Mexico had agreed to send 10,000 members of its national guard “to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the US, in particular of fentanyl”. In return, the US had agreed to work to prevent high-powered weapons crossing the border into Mexico"'. The US has been supplying the drug cartels with high powered weaponry, so it's not a one-way trade.

[Al Krow]

18 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

There is a tit-for-tat there. To quote the Grauniad, 'Mexico had agreed to send 10,000 members of its national guard “to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the US, in particular of fentanyl”. In return, the US had agreed to work to prevent high-powered weapons crossing the border into Mexico"'. The US has been supplying the drug cartels with high powered weaponry, so it's not a one-way trade.

 

Sounds like a win-win to me? Ordinary citizens of both nations better off on both sides of the US/Mexico border?

[Woodinblack]

3 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Nah. There will be fewer American kids dying of Fentanyl OD pretty soon.

 

Americas drug problem was a prescription drug problem, it wasn't being provided by mexican cartels when it started, it was being provided by their doctors with kick backs from their drug companies.

Whether it is now, maybe, but that is not what got it going

[Al Krow]

Just now, Woodinblack said:

 

Americas drug problem was a prescription drug problem, it wasn't being provided by mexican cartels when it started, it was being provided by their doctors with kick backs from their drug companies.

Whether it is now, maybe, but that is not what got it going

 

Does it really matter how it started way back when? Surely what matters is trying to solve a massive and brutal drugs crisis right now that is claiming 100,000 American lives every year. Have you seen what Fentanyl does - it's awful.

I understand Fentanyl is substantially produced and exported from China (please correct me if that is not right). A chunk of that supply is being routed through Mexico. 

[Beer of the Bass]

It'll be interesting to see what it does for my favoured Martin acoustic guitar strings, given that they're made in Mexico by a US based company. I don't know what their international distribution route is, but if they're coming via Martin USA and then sent out to UK and EU distributors, that could add a fair whack.

Edited Monday at 21:32 by Beer of the Bass

[Buddster]

33 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Does it really matter how it started way back when?

Perhaps it does if Trump (or/and the US government) blaime it all on Mexico without acknowledging giant pharmaceutical companys role in this and just add tariffs on these countries imports. 

[Woodinblack]

45 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Does it really matter how it started way back when?

 

Absolutely it does, because if you leave a reason for a thing to happen open it will open again. The fact is that the american healthcare system hasn't been reprimanded for this in any serious way means it doesn't matter if you can stop this drug overnight, there will be another one tomorrow.

 

45 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Surely what matters is trying to solve a massive and brutal drugs crisis right now that is claiming 100,000 American lives every year.

 

If that is what he achieves as a result of what he is doing then it would obviously be good, and maybe a rare high spot.

[Beer of the Bass]

44 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

Does it really matter how it started way back when? Surely what matters is trying to solve a massive and brutal drugs crisis right now that is claiming 100,000 American lives every year. Have you seen what Fentanyl does - it's awful.

I understand Fentanyl is substantially produced and exported from China (please correct me if that is not right). A chunk of that supply is being routed through Mexico. 

 

Trump also just pardoned the Silk Road founder, a marketplace site that facilitated a large volume of illicit drug sales to the US, which doesn't seem to me like the action of someone who cares deeply about tackling opioid addiction. I think he sees it primarily as a stick to beat Mexico with, IMO.

[Downunderwonder]

50 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

I understand Fentanyl is substantially produced and exported from China (please correct me if that is not right). A chunk of that supply is being routed through Mexico. 

That is a plot element of the TV show "Seal Team". It must be true. Or not.

[peteb]

2 hours ago, Al Krow said:

 

Sounds like a win-win to me? Ordinary citizens of both nations better off on both sides of the US/Mexico border?

 

Do you really think that's what this is all about? Or could it be that Trump is worried that a stock market wobble this morning is making the tariffs look ill-advised and he is looking for a way to back down without looking weak?

 

It has just been announced that he's suspending the tariffs on Canada for 30 days as well,  and I haven't heard anything about tens of thousands of Canadian troops being sent to the US border to politely and apologetically return any stray moose who accidently stray across the border! 

 

[MrDinsdale]

58 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

Do you really think that's what this is all about? Or could it be that Trump is worried that a stock market wobble this morning is making the tariffs look ill-advised and he is looking for a way to back down without looking weak?

 

It has just been announced that he's suspending the tariffs on Canada for 30 days as well,  and I haven't heard anything about tens of thousands of Canadian troops being sent to the US border to politely and apologetically return any stray moose who accidently stray across the border! 

 

I was just reading Canada announced this plan a couple of months ago so this trade war hasn't actually achieved anything that couldn't have just been negotiated peacefully, without crashing the market.

[MrDinsdale]

Here is the announcement from last year, notice the striking resemblance.

[Al Krow]

Fwiw - I'm not for a moment advocating a trade war. They make no sense, and are generally economic lose / lose.  

Also we need to fact check. Do we know which trade block has some of the highest tariffs in place at the moment e.g. on agricultural products (hint: so that French farmers don't riot?) And who ends up paying more for their food as a result? So actually there's a lot of complexity here. 

 

You guys keep referring to a "market crash". What market crash?! Stock markets can go up and down by 1% on a particular day, it happens all the time. The Nasdaq fell far more a week ago when a relatively cheap to build DeepSeek AI app got everyone's attention. The last time the markets properly crashed was in March 2020, when they fell by 30%. I know a few folk on this thread have mentioned being worried about their pension pots, my only real point is to say that there's been nothing so far to panic about in what the markets have done, unlike when Covid struck. 

 

But I for one will I'll be delighted if fewer Americans die of Fentanyl ODs and fewer Mexicans get butchered by drug cartels because Trump has shown some bravado, even if he's not to everyone's taste in how he's gone about it. 

[JoeEvans]

10,000 troops is pure theatre. Taking into account catering teams, admin staff, logistics people etc that will be maybe 5,000 active soldiers; taking into account shift patterns, leave rotations etc that might be 800 out on patrol at anyone time. 130-odd six-man patrols on a 2,000 mile border.

And since when did local border patrols have any impact whatsoever on the supply of drugs? You can get drugs in prisons!

Drug problems are demand-led, and opiate addictions are about pain, trauma and hopelessness. Until the US has less of those, they will continue to have epidemics of opiate addiction.

[Skybone]

I do wonder why he uses a permanent marker to sign his executive orders.

[Si600]

1 minute ago, Skybone said:

I do wonder why he uses a permanent marker to sign his executive orders.

Because he eats the crayons?

[Si600]

I'm not pretending to understand the ins and outs of it, but what happens if DT puts a 25% tariff on Canadian goods but Canada and the ROTW say, "OK, Whatever" and ignore it without applying retaliatory tariffs of their own?  Is that seen as a political rolling over or doesn't it work financially?  The US raising tariffs on all its imports isn't hurting anyone but its own importers surely?

Edited yesterday at 07:32 by Si600

[Cato]

The elephant in the room is that wages in the US are high, much higher than most western countries.

 

For comparison the avergage wage in the UK s around £37,000 pa, in the US it's around £53,000pa.

 

I doubt Trump can ever make tariffs high enough to make it economically desirable for manufacturers to move their factories back to the US, which Trump claims is his ultimate goal with the policy, especially not if they want to sell to the rest of the world at competitive prices.

 

Edited yesterday at 08:00 by Cato

[Downunderwonder]

34 minutes ago, Si600 said:

Because he eats the crayons?

Would explain his colouring.